rcf] 


In  Guilfordj&JTinecticut. 


A  HISTORY 


OF 


I  N 


GUILFORD,  CONNECTICUT. 


AN  ADDRESS  DELIVERED  BY   THE    RECTOR,  REV.  WILLIAM  ^ 
G.  ANDREWS,  IN  SEPTEMBER,  1894,  ON  THE  OCCASION 
OF  THE  ioTH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  PARISH. 


FROM    THE   PRESS   OF 

THE  ECHO,   GUILFORD,  CONN. 
1895. 


INTRODUCTORY. 


The  following  address  has  been  revised  and  somewhat 
enlarged,  and  portions  omitted  in  the  delivery  are  now  inserted. 
A  few  corrections  have  been  made.  It  is  based  to  a  consider- 
able extent  on  early  records  faithfully  preserved  by  the  Rev. 
David  Baldwin,  and  now  courteously  transferred  to  the  parish. 
They  were  consulted  many  years  ago  by  the  historian  of  Guil- 
ford, Hon.  Ralph  D.  Smith,  but  had  long  been  lost  sight  of. 
Other  sources  of  information  are  mentioned  in  the  notes.  I 
must,  however,  express  more  distinctly  my  obligations  to  one  of 
Mr.  Smith's  manuscripts,  kindly  placed  in  my  hands  by  his 
grandson,  Bernard  C.  Steiner,  Ph.  D.,  of  Baltimore,  and  to  Dr. 
Talcott's  priceless  collection  of  genealogies,  made  easily  accessi- 
ble to  residents  of  Guilford  by  the  unselfish  diligence  of  the  late 
Mr.  Alfred  G.  Hull  and  his  associates  in  the  task  of  copying  the 
volume.  Guilford  is  uncommonly  fortunate  in  having  had  among 
her  citizens  two  such  untiring  students  of  local  records  as  Mr. 
Smith  and  Dr.  Talcott.  It  is  impossible  to  name  all  who  have 
aided  me  in  my  work,  grateful  as  I  have  had  reason  to  be  to 
many  friends  in  Guilford  and  elsewhere  for  assistance  of  various 
kinds.  But  I  must  add  to  the  names  given  in  the  notes  those 
of  Mr.  Charles  H.  Post  of  Guilford,  the  Rev.  Wilfred  H.  Dean 
and  Mr.  Jerome  Coan  of  North  Guilford,  Mr.  Eli  F.  Rogers  of 
Branford,  the  Rev.  J.  Frederick  Sexton  of  Cheshire,  Miss  Eliza- 
beth M.  Beardsley  of  New  Haven,  and  Mrs.  Susan  Johnson 
Hudson  and  Miss  Russell  of  Stratford.  All  who  may  be  inter- 
ested in  the  story  of  the  parish  owe  much  to  the  enterprise  and 
historical  tastes  of  Mr.  Frederick  C.  Norton  of  Guilford  for  the 
appearance  of  the  address  in  its  present  form. 

Some  account  of  our  commemorative  services  ought  to  be 
given,  though  there  is  space  only  for  an  outline.  At  ten  o'clock 
Bishop  Williams  (who  warmly  sympathized  with  the  gladness 
which  his  presence  so  much  increased),  confirmed  two  candi- 
dates (having  confirmed  a  larger  class  in  May),  and  addressed 


•rv^ 


201323? 


6  Introductory. 

the  congregation.  He  spoke  of  the  significance  of  such  anniver- 
saries in  their  threefold  bearing — on  the  past,  the  present,  and 
the  future.  At  the  second  service,  held  at  a  quarter  before 
eleven,  the  Bishop  was  assisted  in  the  celebration  of  the  Holy 
Communion  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Thomas  Ruggles  Pynchon,  the 
Rev.  Dr.  Samuel  Hart,  and  the  rector.  The  sermon  was  preached 
by  the  Rev.  Dr.  George  D.  Johnson  from  i  Kings  xix.  4 : 
"  Now,  O  Lord,  take  away  my  life  ;  for  I  am  not  better  than 
my  fathers."  The  sentiment  underlying  Elijah's  half-despair- 
ing cry  was  developed  with  much  force  and  beauty.  As  life 
goes  on  and  we  look  back  over  our  past,  we  often  seem  to  our- 
selves to  have  failed.  But  God's  work  is  advancing,  and  His 
faithful  servants  cannot  really  fail. 

Drs.  Pynchon,  Hart  and  Johnson  are  all  of  Guilford  stock. 
The  first,  formerly  president  of  Trinity  College,  is  descended  from 
the  two  Congregational  pastors  whose  name  he  bears  ;  the  second, 
also  of  Trinity  College,  and  secretary  of  the  House  of  Bishops,  is 
descended  from  the  Rev.  John  Hart  of  East  Guilford  (now  Mad- 
ison), who  in  1722  had  nearly  resolved  to  apply  for  episcopal 
ordination  with  Timothy  Cutler  and  Samuel  Johnson  ;  the  third 
is  descended  from  the  distinguished  clergyman  last  named,  a 
native  of  Guilford,  as  also  from  the  great  Puritan  divine,  Jona- 
than Edwards. 

In  the  evening  prayers  were  read  from  the  old  folio  Prayer 
Book,  probably  brought  from  England  in  1764  by  the  Rev.  Bela 
Hubbard.  The  Rev.  W.  H.  Dean,  rector  of  St.  John's  Church, 
North  Guilford,  which  was  until  1834  generally  united  in  one 
cure  with  Guilford,  performed  this  service.  His  English  birth, 
combined  with  his  American  orders,  gave  his  participation  addi- 
tional interest,  since  the  predecessors  of  the  existing  congrega- 
tion, while  Americans  by  birth,  not  only  belonged  to  the  Church 
of  England,  but  thought  of  themselves  as  Englishmen  and  of 
England  as  "home." 

Among  those  who  took  part  in  the  commemoration  as  wor- 
shipers were  descendants  of  Samuel  Smithson,  of  Nathaniel 
Johnson,  of  Bela  Hubbard,  of  Andrew  Ward,  of  Friend  Collins, 
of  Thomas  Powers,  and  doubtless  of  various  others  who  are 
named  in  the  following  pages.  In  the  evening  the  Methodist 
and  the  two  Congregational  churches  were  closed,  and  their 


Introductory.  7 

pastors,  the  Rev.  Otis  J.  Range,  the  Rev.  Geo.  W.  Banks  and 
the  Rev.  Frederick  E.  Snow,  were  present  by  invitation,  with 
many  members  of  their  congregations,  to  rejoice  with  us  as 
being  all  members  of  one  Body.  The  prayer,  "  For  the  Unity 
of  God's  People,"  which  Samuel  Johnson  can  hardly  have  found 
in  Samuel  Smithson's  Prayer  Book,  though  it  had  already  been 
set  forth  in  England  (1714),  is  in  our  venerable  folio.  Its  use 
on  this  occasion  might  have  recalled  Dr.  Johnson's  efforts  in 
behalf  of  comprehension,  as  well  as  the  belief  of  Thomas  Rug- 
gles,  that  the  early  days,  when  perhaps  not  a  single  Christian  in 
Guilford  had  consciously  separated  from  the  Church  of  England, 
still  continued. 

A  beautiful  set  of  communion  linen,  the  gift  of  Mrs.  Aletha 
C.  Graves,  was  used  for  the  first  time  in  the  morning.  And  the 
anniversary  was  a  far  more  joyful  one  for  the  knowledge  that 
the  effort  to  signalize  it  by  the  extinction  of  a  debt  of  between 
eleven  and  twelve  hundred  dollars,  begun  just  before  Lent,  had 
been  entirely  successful.  Summer  parishioners,  as  well  as 
former  members  of  the  congregation  or  their  representatives, 
had  given  indispensable  aid,  but  the  greater  part  of  the  task  was 
performed  by  those  whose  homes  are  here,  and  at  least  half  of 
it  bv  the  ladies. 


OF 


Christ   Church    Parish,  Guilford,  Conn. 


AN  ADDRESS  DELIVERED  AT  THE  CELEBRATION  OF  THE  ONE  HUNDRED 

AND  FIFTIETH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  PARISH,  SEPTEMBER  16, 

1894,   BY  THE  RECTOR,  WILLIAM  G.  ANDREWS. 


On  the  fourth  of  September,  1744  (old  style),  or  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  ago  yesterday,  what  was  then  called  a 
"  vestry,"  and  would  now  be  called  a  parish  meeting,  "was 
held  at  the  house  of  William  Ward  in  Gilford.  Nathaniel  John- 
son and  William  Ward  were  appointed  Church  Wardens  for  the 
year  ensueing  ;  and  Samuel  Collins  appointed  Clerk.  It  was 
likewise  agreed  upon  that  the  Professors  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land meet  in  order  to  Carry  on  worship  by  reading  a  form  of 
Prayers  &  Sermons  by  themselves."  The  "Memorandum" 
which  I  quote,  and  which  is  the  oldest  of  our  parish  documents 
(unexpectedly  recovered,  with  others,  during  the  past  year),  is 
signed  by  "James  Lyons,  minister,"  and  the  two  wardens. 
The  action  which  it  records  was  the  organization  of  the  parish, 
as  is  clearly  proved  by  a  statement  of  two  who  took  part  in  it, 
made  many  years  later. 1  But  although  the  proper  date  of  our 
anniversary  is  tr^us  fixed,  the  gradual  process  of  which  the  organ- 
ization was  one  result,  had  begun  nearly  thirty  years  before.  And 
we  must  go  even  farther  into  the  past  than  this.  The  minister 
of  the  First  (Congregational)  Church,  Thomas  Ruggles  the 
younger,  afterwards  virtually  accused  the  conformists  of  commit- 
ting schism  in  setting  up  worship  "  by  themselves."  They  had, 
he  declared,  no  sufficient  ground  for  their  proceedings,  inasmuch 
as  his  church  was  and  always  had  been  a  congregation  of  the 


/  Church  Documents,  Connecticut,  ii.  126-7. 


to  Early  History  of 

Church  oi  England.1  We  ought,  then,  to  look  back  at  least 
two  hundred  and  fifty  years  in  order  to  ascertain  what  the 
national  church  really  was  to  the  Puritan  emigrants,  and 
whether  they  had  preserved  enough  of  what  most  Englishmen 
valued  it  for  to  satisfy  reasonable  Christians.  This  will  help  us 
to  decide  whether  Nathaniel  Johnson  and  his  friends  had,  in 
fact,  committed  schism. 

To  the  larger  part  of  the  early  Puritans,  in  New  England  as 
in  England,  the  national  church  was  unquestionably  their  spir- 
itual mother,  communicating  to  them  as  they  gladly  confessed 
their  part  "in  the  common  salvation. ":  It  embodied  the  Chris- 
tianity of  their  nation,  and  in  the  belief  of  Puritans,  not  less 
than  of  Anglicans,  it  was  its  office  as  a  national  church  to  main- 
tain the  religious  unity  of  English  Christians,  and,  still  more, 
to  provide  every  Englishman,  who  did  not  plainly  show  himself 
unworthy,  with  access  to  all  the  means  of  grace,  that  he  might 
live  and  die  as  becomes  a  Christian.  To  have  such  access  was 
a  dearly  cherished  right,  though  in  a  national,  and  especially  in 
an  established  church,  it  might  be  grievously  abused.  By  slow 
degrees  Episcopal  government  and  liturgical  worship  had  be- 
come, in  Puritan  eyes,  first  offensive  and  then  unlawful.  But 
these  were  regarded  as  only  blemishes  on  the  system,  and  might 
be  removed  without  destroying  it.  And  the  founders  of  Guil- 
ford  had  hardly  finished  their  first  dwelling-houses,  and  probably 
had  not  begun  their  first  meeting-house,  when  the  Long  Parlia- 
ment met  (Nov.  3,  1640),  with  the  purpose  of  reforming  the 
church.  And  about  three  months  after  they  had  reared  their  spir- 
itual house  of  Christian  souls  on  its  seven  "pillars"3  (June  19, 
1643) ,  the  commons  of  England  had  sworn  to  abolish  Episcopacy, 
and,  by  implication,  to  abandon  the  Prayer-Book.  (Sept.  25, 
1 643 . )  As  these  and  similar  changes  were  accomplished  it  did  not 
seem  to  the  exiles  that  the  Church  of  England  was  disappear- 
ing, but  rather,  that  she  was  becoming  "all  glorious  within." 
And  although  the  English  establishment  was  never  fully  con- 

1  History  of  Guilford,"   in    Collections  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Societv,  First 
Senes,  iv.  186. 

2  "Humble  Request,"   etc.,    1630.    Quoted  from  Hutchinson's   History  of  Massachu- 
setts, i.  431,  by  Coit,  Dexterand  others. 

3  The  word  "pillars"  does  not  appear  in  the  Guilford  Records,  but  is  likely  to   have 
been  used  here  as  in  New  Haven. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  n 

formed  to  the  New  England  model,  it  grew  so  attractive  to  the 
emigrants  that  many  of  them  went  back  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of 
the  new  reformation.  One  of  these  returning  pilgrims  was 
Henry  Whitheld,  the  first  minister  of  Guilford,  and  first  of  the 
seven  pillars.  He  is  understood  to  have  accepted  a  living  in  the 
city  of  Winchester,  and,  if  so,  he  was,  during  the  last  years  of 
his  life,  in  his  own  belief,  as  truly  a  minister  of  the  Church 
of  England  as  when,  long  before,  he  had  been  the  conforming 
rector  of  Ockley.  And  in  one  important  particular  he  must 
have  departed  from  the  New  England  model.  Besides  dispens- 
ing with  bishops  and  a  liturgy,  the  Puritans  here,  unlike  those 
of  England  and  Scotland,  had  attempted,  not  unnaturall}7, 
though  with  some  misgivings,  to  guard  the  sacraments  against 
the  approach  of  unholy  men,  by  requiring  a  ''relation  of  experi- 
ences" from  all  who  desired  to  be  communicants,  while  only 
communicants  could  obtain  baptism  for  their  children.  This 
rule  excluded  a  large  number  of  sincere  Christians  of  calm  tem- 
perament from  the  use  of  the  sacraments,  and  was  at  least  as 
serious  an  invasion  of  those  equal  rights  which  it  belongs  to  the 
church  to  maintain  as  was,  for  example,  the  requirement,  so 
offensive  to  man}'  Puritans,  of  kneeling  at  the  Lord's  table.  In 
Winchester,  if  he  had  a  parish  there,  and  if  the  ordinances  of 
Parliament  were  obe)*ed,  Henry  Whitfield  could  deprive  no 
member  of  his  congregation  of  full  Christian  privileges  unless 
he  were  grossly  ignorant  or  openly  wicked,  of  which  matters 
Parliament  was  to  be  the  final  judge.1 

The  second  of  the  seven  original  members  of  the  Guilford 
church — John  Higginson.  Whitfield 's  son-in-law,  associate  and 
successor — would  have  returned  to  England  in  1659,  but  for  a 
shipwreck  which  finally  fixed  his  home  in  Massachusetts.  And 
he  doubtless  would  also  have  served  in  the  national  church 
while  it  remained  under  Puritan  control,  and  would  have  con- 
formed to  the  churchly  rule  about  the  administration  of  the  sac- 
raments which  he  and  Whitfield  had  helped  to  set  aside  here. 
And  we  have,  I  think,  sufficient  reason  for  believing  that  he 
treasured  in  his  memory  to  the  end  of  his  long  life,  words  which 
he  heard  from  the  lips  of  his  own  father,  as  the}'  looked  back 


i  NeaPs  History  of  I'uritans.     London,  1837 ;  ii.  276,  370-1,  379,  51:,  6ro-n. 


12  Early  History  of 

together,  from  the  deck  of  the  ship  which  was  bearing  them 
westward,  on  the  granite  cliffs  of  Cornwall.  Then,  as  we  are 
told,  Francis  Higginson  utterly  repudiated  the  names  which  the 
Separatists  gave  to  the  English  church,  of  "Babylon"  and 
"Rome,"  and  cried:  "Farewel,  dear  England!  Farewel, 
the  Church  of  God  in  England  !  .  .  .  We  do  not  go 
as  Separatists  ...  but  ...  to  practice  the  positive 
Part  of  Church  Reformation."1 

It  is  also  highly  probable  that  two  more  of  the  seven, 
Whitfield's  other  son-in-law,  Samuel  Desborough,  and  John 
Hoadly,  who  acted  for  a  while  as  a  Puritan  minister  in  Scot- 
land, both  died  in  the  communion  of  the  Church  of  England, 
after  bishops  and  Prayer  Book  had  been  restored.  Whether 
this  was  true  of  Hoadly  or  not,  we  know  that  two  of  his  sons, 
born  near  the  northwest  corner  of  the  Green,  took  episcopal  or- 
ders. It  is  practically  certain  that  the  first  natives  of  Guil- 
ford  who  assumed  the  ministerial  office — the  first  "ministers 
raised  up,"  as  the  phrase  is,  in  the  ancient  Puritan  congregation 
established  here — were  Episcopalians.  If  that  congregation  was 
not,  in  those  days,  as  Mr.  Ruggles  declared,  a  congregation  of 
the  Church  of  England,  the  separation  was  scarcely  felt,  and 
even  a  return,  in  England,  to  the  historic  order  and  worship, 
was  not  difficult. 

And  while  John  Higginson  was  still  pastor  of  Guilford,  that 
right  of  access  to  the  sacraments  on  the  part  of  reputable  profes- 
sors of  Christianity  which  it  was  characteristic  of  Congregational 
Puritanism  to  limit  unwarrantably,  and  which  Whitfield  must, 
and  Higginson  probably  would,  have  conceded  at  home,  began 
to  be  demanded  in  the  colonies  (1656,  or  earlier).  The  de- 
mand was  soon  urged  in  the  name  of  the  Church  of  England  by 
men,  undoubtedly  Puritans  and  nonconformists,  who  neverthe- 
less declared  themselves  members  of  that  church.  Some  of 
them,  as  recent  emigrants,  must  have  been  members  of  it  under 
the  commonwealth,  and  all  believed  that  they  had  not  forfeited 
the  right  of  Christian  Englishmen  by  removing  to  the  English 
colony  of  Connecticut.  And  there  was  a  strong  disposition  to 
redress  what  was  evidently  felt  to  be  a  wrong,  though  the  meas- 

i  Magnolia,  Hi.  74,  as  quoted  in  Dexter's  Congregationalism  as  seen   in  its  Literature* 
414-5,  and  note. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  13 

ures  adopted  were  inadequate,  and  their  inadequacy  has  much 
to  do  with  the  welcome  afterwards  given  to  the  Anglican  mis- 
sionaries. * 

One  fact  more,  belonging  to  the  seventeenth  century,  brings 
into  view  an  attractive  aspect  of  the  relations  then  existing  be- 
tween Congregationalists  and  the  mother  church,  while  it 
throws  a  pleasant  light  on  the  origin  and  primary  aims  of  those 
missionary  labors  in  the  eighteenth  century,  of  which  even  such 
tolerant  Congregationalists  as  Thomas  Ruggles  finally  com- 
plained as  proselytism. 

More  than  once  we  find  the  name  of  William  Leete,  still 
another  of  the  seven  pillars  of  the  First  Church,  attached  to  an 
account  of  certain  funds  received  from  England  for  the  support 
of  Indian  missions.  The  illustrious  John  Eliot  derived  part  of 
his  income  from  this  source,  and  his  son  Joseph,  the  third  pas- 
tor of  Guilford  and  ancestor  of  many  members  of  this  congrega- 
tion, was  once,  at  least,  thus  paid  for  work  among  the  Indians 
of  Massachusetts.2  Now  the  contributions  which  Governor 
Leete,  as  from  time  to  time  one  of  the  Commissioners  of  the 
United  Colonies,  had  a  share  in  administering,  came  from  a 
society  established  "for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in  New 
England  and  the  Parts  Adjacent."  At  the  head  of  it,  for  about 
thirty  years,  stood  a  famous  Anglican  layman,  Robert  Boyle, 
who,  with  the  support  of  the  Earl  of  Clarendon  and  others,  had 
been  its  preserver  and  second  founder.  Yet  it  was,  in  fact,  a 
Puritan  society,  incorporated  by  the  Long  Parliament  six 
months  after  it  had  beheaded  the  king  (July  2j,  1649).  It 
owed  its  origin  largely  to  the  interest  aroused  by  Eliot's  earlier 
labors,  an  interest  which  Henry  Whitfield,  going  home  in  1651 
to  share  the  Puritan  triumph,  helped,  by  his  writings,  to  inten- 
sify. But  the  Christ-like  longing  to  save  the  souls  of  the 
heathen  of  North  America,  which  the  society  embodied,  had  al- 
ready moved  devout  Puritans  and  Anglicans  to  work  together  in 
imparting  what  was  to  both,  and  must  be  to  all  Christians,  "the 
common  salvation." 

After  Boyle's  death,  his   society   (or  "company"   as  it  was 


1  Petition,  etc.,  Oct.  17,  1664;   first  printed   in   American    Church   Review,   April,  1857, 
pp.  106-7.    Trumbull's  History  of  Connecticut,  i.  297-9,  etc- 

2  Hasard's  State  Papers,  ii.  442-3,  496. 


!4  Early  History  of 

then  called)  doubtless  passed  under  the  control  of  nonconform- 
ists, who  had  now  secured  toleration,  and  could  administer 
openh-  their  own  institutions.  But  the  missionary  impulse, 
neither  Puritan  nor  Anglican,  but  Christian,  was  still  strong  in 
the  national  church.  Within  ten  years  (1701)  it  took  form  in  a 
new  society,  with  one  of  Boyle's  dearest  friends,  Archbishop 
Tenison,  at  its  head.  It  adopted  a  name  so  like  the  old  that 
the  two  have  often  been  confounded,  and  borrowed,  with  no 
great  change,  the  device  on  the  original  seal  of  Congregational 
Massachusetts.  And  it  so  manifestly  perpetuated  the  life  of  the 
Puritan  company  that  the  continued  existence  of  the  latter 
seems  sometimes  to  have  been  overlooked  by  modern  noncon- 
formists. It  was,  in  short,  the  great  institution  which  American 
Episcopalians  know  and  thankfully  honor  as  the  Society  for  the 
Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in  Foreign  Parts.1  It  would  be  im- 
proper to  describe  the  Anglican  society  as  the  successor  of  the 
Puritan  company,  but  the  latter  was,  in  a  real  sense,  the  parent 
of  the  former.  And  the  society  became  the  main  channel  of 
that  stream  of  Christian  feeling  and  purpose  which  we  can  trace 
back  through  the  joint  labors  of  Anglicans  like  Robert  Boyle, 
and  Puritans  like  Richard  Baxter,  and  the  missionary  zeal  of 
fierce  revolutionists  at  the  beginning  of  the  commonwealth,  to 
the  associated  efforts  of  high  church  bishops  and  reforming 
presb}rters  to  send  the  Gospel  to  America  in  the  reign  of  Charles 
the  First.2  The  vast  growth  of  the  English  settlements  here 
had  made  the  religious  wants  of  the  settlers  a  more  pressing 
burden  on  the  consciences  of  Christian  Englishmen  than  those 
of  the  Indians  or  the  negroes,  though  the  new  society  did  care 
for  all,  as  ultimately  fqr  non-Christian  races  in  the  East,  but  its 
primary  object,  as  defined  by  its  charter,  was  to  provide  "an 
Orthodox  Clergy  to  live  amongst"  such  of  the  king's  "Loveing 


1  Collection  of  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  \.  211-19;  Ed.  of  1806;  Anderson's   His- 
tory of  the  Colonial  Church ,  2d  Ed.,  London,  1856,  ii.  10-15,  188-90,  193-4.  208-9,495-9;  Mission- 
ary H  'i»/d.  an  Encyclopedia,  etc.,  84;  Brown's   History  of  Missions,    Philadelphia,    1820,    i. 
65-8,  and  note,  ii.  482.  485,  488 ;  "Guilford  and  Madison  in  Literature,  by  H.  P.  Robinson  (a 
descendant  of  Whitfield)  in  Proceedings  at  the  Celebration  of  the  zsolh   Anniversary,   etc., 
118. 

2  Bishop  Lake,  of  Bath  and  Wells,  acted  with  John  White,  a   conforming  Puritan,  in 
promoting  the  settlement  made  at  Salem  in  1629;  Robert  Sanderson,  afterwards   Bishop 
of  Lincoln,  approved  a  petition  in  behalf  of  Indian  missions  along  with  Edmund  Calamy 
of  the  Presbyterian  party  (Hist,  of  Col.  Ch.  ii.  10-16,  i88etseq). 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  15 

Subjects"  as  might  "want  the  Administration  of  God's  Word 
and  Sacraments."  This  was  a  legitimate  and,  indeed,  indispen- 
sable enlargement  of  the  task  of  the  original  company,  and 
New  England  Congregationalists  felt  that  missionaries  were 
needed  in  almost  every  colony  except  Massachusetts  and  Con- 
necticut. And  in  those  two  colonies  the  earliest  missionaries, 
in  spite  of  a  zeal  for  Episcopacy  not  shared  by  all  their  succes- 
sors, were  warmly  welcomed  by  some  of  the  Congregational 
ministers,  enjoyed  their  hospitality,  and  preached  in  their  pul- 
pits.1 

We  find,  then,  that  from  the  time  when  Guilford  was  settled 
to  the  period  in  which  our  own  parochial  history  begins,  influ- 
ences had  been  at  work  favorable  to  kind  feeling  on  the  part  of 
the  settlers  and  their  children  towards  the  Church  of  England — 
in  England.  And  of  this,  Mr.  Ruggles's  willingness  to  believe 
that  he  and  his  people  were  members  of  the  national  church  is 
a  striking  illustration.  We  also  find  that  the  settlers  soon 
wished  for  and  asked  for  Christian  rights,  which  the  Church  of 
England  conceded,  sometimes  quite  too  easily,  and  which  Con- 
gregationalism then  denied.  We  even  find  that  not  only  had 
the  famous  society  which  helped  to  reproduce  in  America 
features  of  Anglican  Christianity  least  agreeable  to  our  Puritan 
lathers,  received  into  its  life  a  strong  current  colored  by  Puri- 
tanism, but  that  as  we  ascend  the  stream  towards  its  remoter 
sources  we  seem  to  discover  a  faint  reflection  of  the  thatched 
meeting-house  on  Guilford  green.  What  we  do  not  find  is 
proof  that  the  First  Church  was  a  congregation  of  the  Church  of 
England  in  the  year  1744.  Had  it  been  in  England  its  assem- 
blies would  have  become  unlawful  in  1662  ;  after  1689  it  would 
have  been  a  legalized  society  of  dissenters,  wholly  separated 
from  the  establishment.  The  church  was  in  New  England,  and 
whether  the  Act  of  Uniformity  and  the  Toleration  Bill  were  law  in 
America  or  not,  it  is  not  quite  reasonable  to  regard  the  Atlantic 
Ocean  as  creating  an  ecclesiastical  union  which  would  not  have 
existed  without  it.  The  separation,  however  accomplished,  was 
a  fact,  and  was  accepted  as  such  by  both  parties.  And  it  follows 
that  those  who  saw  the  fact  which  Mr.  Ruggles  was  disposed 


i  Keith's  "Journal,"  in  Publications  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Historical  Society,  1851, 
pp.  7,  8,  10,  26-7. 


1 6  Early  History  of 

not  to  see,  and  who  might  have  held  his  half-filial  attitude 
towards  the  mother  church,  when  they  finally  desired  that  as  fai 
as  they  were  concerned  the  separation  might  be  done  away, 
were  not  cherishing  a  spirit  which  he  should  have  thought 
schismatical.  As  little  was  this  the  case  when  they  also  desired 
to  enjoy  all  the  good  things  which  were  offered  by  the  Church 
of  England,  and  could  not  be  obtained  at  his  hands,  even  if  he 
had  been  right  in  thinking  himself  one  of  her  ministers.  When 
they  began  to  long  for  the  majesty  and  sacred  beauty  of  her 
worship,  for  the  pastoral  oversight  of  her  historic  ministry,  as 
old  as  Christianity,  above  all,  for  the  freedom  of  approach  to 
the  ordinances  of  Christ,  which,  however  sadly  abused  in  Eng- 
land, was,  nevertheless,  their  right  as  far  as  they  tried  to  keep 
their  baptismal  covenant — when  they  longed  for  these  things, 
and  he  could  promise  none  of  them,  he  could  not  wonder  if  they 
sought  them  elsewhere.  Why  they  desired  them  and  how  they 
found  them,  remains  to  be  told. 

Not  far  from  the  year  1707,  and  during  the  pastorate  of  the 
elder  Thomas  Ruggles,  an  Englishman  named  Samuel  Smith- 
son  came  to  Guilford.  By  the  will  of  his  kinsman,  Thomas 
Macock,  he  became,  in  that  year  the  possessor  of  a  farm  lying 
just  bej'ond  West  river,  and  extending  towards  the  sea  at  Mul- 
berry Point.  Though  a  member  of  the  Church  of  England,  he 
doubtless  fell  in  with  the  religious  usages  of  his  neighbors,  and 
when  he  died,  in  1718,  he  was,  I  suppose,  the  collector  of  the 
minister's  rate  for  the  First  Society.1  His  two  daughters,  Han- 
nah and  Doroth}%  married  the  Congregational  pastors  of  Kil- 
lingworth  (Clinton)  and  North  Guilford,  Jared  Eliot  and  Sam- 
uel Russell,  though  descendants  of  the  former,  are  now 
communicants  in  this  parish.  But  Samuel  Smithson  brought  to 
Guilford  a  love  for  those  good  things  with  which  the  Church  of 
England  enriches  her  children,  and  he  was  able  so  to  transmit  it 
that  it  has  borne  fruit,  here  and  elsewhere,  a  thousand-fold. 
One  of  the  sixteen  volumes  (besides  his  Bible)  which  formed 
his  library  was  a  Prayer  Book.  That  he  lent  about  two  years 
before  he  died  (1716)  to  a  young  man  of  nineteen  or  twenty, 


i  New  Haven  Probate  Records,  Hi.  108-12;  Guilford  Book  of  Teriyers.  etc..  from  1648, 
PP-  3-  57  :  Guilford  Land  Records,  i.  105-6 ;  Records  of  Votes  and  Acts  of  the  West  Society  Lib 
I.,  A. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Gnilford,   Conn.  17 

named  Samuel  Johnson.  He  \vas  the  son  of  a  deacon  of  the 
First  Church,  and  grandson  of  another,  and  a  recent  graduate 
of  the  Collegiate  School  at  Saybrook.1  Previous  reading  had 
prepared  young  Johnson  to  enjoy  the  Prayer  Book,  and  later 
studies,  prolonged  for  years,  were  needed  to  convince  him, 
after  entering  the  Congregational  ministry,  that  he  must  seek 
for  valid  orders  in  the  Church  of  England.  And,  partly  in  vir- 
tue of  personal  temperament,  partly  through  reading  which  he 
pursued  after  his  earliest  study  of  the  Prayer  Book,  he  attained 
a  type  of  piety  distinctly  unlike  that  of  the  good  men  around 
him,  or  even  of  most  of  his  contemporaries  in  England.  It  was 
more  filial  and  joyous  than  theirs  ;  it  was  more  sympathetic  and 
charged  with  a  larger  hope,  because  resting  on  a  truer,  clearer 
vision  of  God  than  that  of  the  older  Puritans.  In  many  re- 
spects it  nearly  reproduced  the  inner  life  of  the  Anglican  saints 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  Samuel  Johnson's  personal  character, 
I  believe,  did  more  than  the  labors  of  other  men  to  promote  the 
growth  of  the  Church  of  England  in  this  commonwealth,  and 
did  more  than  his  talents  and  learning  to  make  him  what  the 
first  President  Dwight  called  him,  "the  father  of  Episcopacy  in 
Connecticut."  And  it  was  such  a  character  as  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer,  intelligently  and  devoutly  used,  is  better  fitted 
than  most  human  compositions  to  produce.  When  that  book 
was  placed  in  his  hands,  probably  the  strongest  force  in  his 
spiritual  history  was  put  in  action.  And  we  may  look  back  to 
the  good  deed  of  Samuel  Smithson,  performed  more  than  a 
quarter  of  a  century  before, our  parish  was  founded,  as  its  true 
beginning,  and  to  Mr.  Smithson  himself,  though  he  had  then 
long  been  in  his  grave,  as  in  a  real  sense  its  founder. 

It  was  at  least  seven  years,  or  in  the  autumn  of  1723,  be- 
fore Mr.  Johnson  came  to  his  father's  house  in  Guilford  as  a 
presbyter  of  the  Church  of  England.  He  was  on  his  way  to  the 
one  mission  which  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gos- 
pel had  thus  far  established  in  Connecticut.  It  had  been  under- 
taken chiefly  for  the  benefit  of  recent  emigrants  at  Stiatford, 
who  were  already  Episcopalians.  The  Society,  therefore, 


i  New  Haven  Probate  Records,  iv.  540-1  ;  v.  14-15 ;  Talcott's  Guilford  Genealogy 
(MS.) ;  Samuel  Johnson's  Autobiography  (MS.)  :  Beardsley's  Life  and  Correspondence  of 
Samuel  Johnson,  12. 


1 8  Early  History  of 

which  had  now  been  in  operation  more  than  twenty  years,  was 
not  making  very  strenuous  efforts  to  convert  Congregationalists, 
neither,  so  far  as  it  appears,  was  Samuel  Johnson.  He  said 
long  afterwards,  "I  never  once  tried  to  proselyte  dissenters,  nor 
do  I  believe  any  of  the  other  ministers  did." 

The  Society  was  not  indifferent  to  the  performance  of  the 
task  which  its  missionary  seemed  to  disclaim,  for  that  was  the 
reconciliation  of  separated  brethren,  the  healing  of  a  schism 
which  in  England  had  but  lately  become  complete  (1689).  It 
instructed  its  representatives  in  America  that  their  duty  towards 
"Parishioners"  opposed  to  or  dissenting  from  the  Church  of 
England  was  to  seek  "to  convince  and  reclaim  them  with  a 
spirit  of  meekness  and  gentleness."  Its  first  missionary  (1702- 
4),  George  Keith,  a  converted  Quaker,  not  eminent  for  "meek- 
ness and  gentleness,"  though  a  good  man,  was  prompt  in  sug- 
gesting measures  which  he  believed  "would  effectually 
contribute  to  the  proselyting  the  main  body  of  the  Dissenting 
People,  to  their  Ancient  Mother,  the  Church,"  towards  which  he 
found  many  of  them,  even  in  New  England,  cherishing  a  filial 
spirit.2  Keith's  mission  was  primarily  one  of  investigation, 
and  his  reports  determined  the  choice  of  positions  to  be  occu- 
pied. That  the  Society,  nevertheless,  as  informed  by  him, 
regarded  other  parts  of  America  as  more  in  need  of  its  help  than 
the  two  Congregational  colonies,  everywhere  furnished  with 
ministers  and  meeting-houses,  appears  from  the  fact  that  in 
1728  it  had  but  two  missionaries  in  Connecticut,  and,  apparent- 
ly, but  three  in  Massachusetts.3  It  was  the  strong  and  persist- 
ent pressure  on  the  part  of  the  colonists  themselves  which  led 
the  Society  to  establish  its  New  England  missions,  and  it  was 
never  able  fully  to  meet  the  demand.  The  eagerness  of  young 
men  to  "go  home  for  orders"  from  Connecticut,  had  to  be 
checked,  and  the  sincerity  and  extent  of  the  popular  desire  was 
thoroughly  tested  by  throwing  on  the  people  not  only  the  ex- 
pense, no  trifling  matter,  of  sending  the  young  men  "home," 
and  of  building  churches,  but  also  of  paying  part  of  the  stipend, 

1  Beardsley's  History  of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  Connecticut,  i.  196. 

2  Anderson's  Hist,  of  Col.  Ch.,  iii.  66-7,  229;  Collect.  P.  E.  Hist.  Soc.,  1851.  pp.  ix.,  xviii., 
26-7  etc. 

3  Humphreys,  "History  of  the  Propagation  Society,"  in  Ch.  Rev.  (vols.  iv.,  v.),  Jan., 
1852,  p.  614 ;  Jan.  1853,  pp.  621-32. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  19 

with  the  serious  additional  cost  of  providing  a  house  and  a  glebe.1 
Samuel  Johnson,  then,  was  acting  in  the  spirit  of  his  instruc- 
tions, as  interpreted  by  the  attitude  of  the  Society  (more  dis- 
tinctly cautious  as  the  century  advanced) ,  when  he  contented 
himself  with  aiding  those  who  sought  information  or  advice, 
and  vigorously  defending  his  church  against  attacks,  made  with 
growing  bitterness.  That  the  Church  of  England  steadily  in- 
creased in  this  commonwealth  was  due  far  less  to  "aggressive 
work"  on  the  part  of  the  Anglican  clergy  than  to  the  fact  that 
the  Anglican  church  supplied  what  Puritanism  had  taught  men 
to  value  as  their  lives,  and  New  England  Congregationalism, 
with  an  honorable,  though  misguided  zeal  for  the  holiness  of 
God's  House,  had  placed  almost  out  of  their  reach.  Their 
"Ancient  Mother"  entered  New  England  in  response  to  the  cry 
of  her  wandering  children,  and  the  Venerable  Society,  upon  the 
whole,  simply  pursued  the  course  denned  by  its  title,  in  labor- 
ing to  propagate  the  Gospel  by  the  method  prescribed  in  its 
charter,  of  providing  for  the  wants  of  English  subjects  with 
"The  Administration  of  God's  Word  and  Sacraments."  The 
history  of  the  parish  at  Guilford,  the  home  of  Johnson's  family, 
whom  he  often  visited,  and  likely,  one  would  have  thought, 
soon  to  furnish  material  for  a  conforming  congregation  which 
the  Society  would  carefully  watch  over  and  sustain,  is  a  striking 
illustration  of  all  this. 

The  earliest  proof  of  any  leaning  towards  conformity  here 
which  I  have  found,  appears  nearly  four  years  after  Johnson's 
return  from  England.  His  father,  Deacon  Samuel  Johnson,' 
died  in  1727  (May  8),  and  the  son  wrrites  that  he  "would  have 
communicated  with  us  if  he  had  lived."  But  the  missionary 
adds  that  his  father  did  not  "think  it  necessary  to  leave  the 
Dissenting  communion,"  although  he  had  already  renounced  its 
theology.2  The  statement  shows,  it  may  be  observed,  that  Mr. 
Johnson  followed  the  Catholic  usage  of  the  mother  church, 
never  departed  from,  I  suppose,  in  this  parish,  of  recognizing 
the  right  to  the  Holy  Communion  conferred  in  baptism,  and  pre- 


1  Humphreys,  in  Ch.  Rev.,  Oct.,  1851,  p.  457;  Abstract  of  Proceedings  of  S.  /J.  6"..  1763, 
1773;  Conn.    Ch.  Docs.,  i.  96,   216,   233-4,  237,269;  ii.  103:  Beardsley,  Hist,  of /'.K.  Ch.   in 

Conn.,  i.  103. 

2  Beardslev's  Life  mid  ( 'nrrespondftice  of  Samuel  Johnson,  59. 

\ 


2o  Early  History  of 

served  by  a  godly  life,  and  that  he  acknowledged  as  valid  the 
baptism  of  his  Congregational  brethren.  This  is  the  more  note- 
worthy because  he  himself,  after  communicating  at  King's 
Chapel,  Boston,  in  virtue  of  his  own  baptism  at  the  hands,  pre- 
sumably, of  Thomas  Ruggles  the  elder,  satisfied  his  personal 
scruples  by  receiving  hypothetical  baptism  in  London.1  Several 
months  after  Deacon  Johnson's  death,  his  younger  son,  Nathan- 
iel, then  twenty-two  years  old,  was  appointed  a  rate-collector  in 
the  First  Society,  being,  evidently,  still  a  Congregationalism*' 
It  maybe  that  within  three  years,  or  in  1730,  he  and  one  or 
two  others  declared  their  conformity,  but  I  have  found  no  con- 
temporary evidence  to  that  effect.3  In  the  mean  time  the 
Church  of  England  was  slowly  growing  in  Fairfield  county, 
where  Samuel  Johnson's  parish  lay,  and  in  New  London 
county,  where  there  were  English  Episcopalians  of  note,  and 
by  the  year  1736  six  clergymen,  all  born  in  New  England, 
though  one  resided  just  west  of  the  border,  were  caring  for 
missions  within  those  limits,  as  well  as  for  scattered  families 
elsewhere.4  In  1736  the  first  missionary  was  settled  in  New 
Haven  county,  in  the  person  of  Jonathan  Arnold,  formerly  pas- 
tor at  West  Haven,  as  Johnson  had  been  before  him.  He  lived 
in  that  village,  but  he  practically  took  the  county  for  his  mis- 
sionary district,  while  he  often  went  beyond  it.3  And  in  May, 
1738,  the  name  of  Nathaniel  Johnson,  with  two  others  after- 
wards found  in  our  parish  records,  appears  in  a  list  of  seventy- 
three  adult  male  members  of  the  Church  of  England  under  Mr. 
Arnold's  care."  It  is  at  least  highly  probable  that  all  the 
three  were  at  that  date  residents  of  Guilford,  and  that,  in  the 
families  of  Nathaniel  Johnson,  Thomas  Walstone  and  David 
Naughty,  we  have  the  nucleus  of  this  congregation.  It  is  also 
probable  that  the  second  of  these  families  conformed  in  Branford 
as  early  as  1728,  and  lived  there  fully  two  years  longer.7  Pos- 


i  Life  and  Correspondence,  23,  34. 

i  Record  of  Votes  and  Acts,  etc.  (Dec.  19,  1727). 

3  Church  Review,  April,  1848,  p.  15. 

4  Beardsley,  Hist,  of  P.  E.  Ch.  in  Conn.,  i.  92,  100-101. 

5  Ibid.,  i.  111-2;  letters  in  possession  of  S.  P.  G.,  Vol.  A.  26  (189).     Copies   of  letters  re- 
lating to  this  region  were  made  in  1893  for  the  Rev.  Dr.  Harwood  of  New  Haven. 

6  Ch.  Rev.  April,  1857,  p.  113.     One  of  the  names  is  Waughtv,  almost  certaiiilv  a  mis- 
print. 

7  Registry  Book  (Christ  Ch..   Stratford),   6,   8.     There   was   a   Nathanael  Johnson  of 
Branford,  hut  he  can  hardly  have  declared   himself   in    17^0.    Bailev's    Triiiitv    Church, 
Branford,  6.  8,  n. 


Christ  Church  Parish,    Guilford,    Conn.  21 

sibly  Samuel  Johnson  received  in  1730  declarations  of  conform- 
ity from  his  brother  and  Mr.  Naughty,  either  at  Guilford  or  at 
Branford,  where  he  baptized  two  members  of  the  Walstone  fam- 
ily on  the  twentieth  of  October.  This  might  account  for  the 
statement  to  which  I  have  alluded,  that  there  were  conformists 
here  in  that  year.  Be  this  as  it  may,  it  is  in  1738  that  the  first 
indications  known  to  me  of  the  existence  of  anything  like  a 
company  of  Episcopalians  in  Guilford  appear  in  early  records. 
And  it  was  six  years  longer  before  a  parish  was  organized. 
There  may  have  been  more  than  one  cause  for  this  slow 
rate  of  progress,  in  virtue  of  which  at  least  eighteen  parishes  in 
Connecticut  were  organized  earlier  than  ours.  It  seems  to  me 
not  impossible  that  Samuel  Johnson's  own  influence  with  his 
friends  in  Guilford  was  thrown  against  haste  on  their  part. 
For  we  know  that  during  some  portion  of  the  period  before 
1740  he  cherished  strong  hopes  of  a  general  adhesion  to  the 
Church  of  England,  if  entire  conformity  were  not  demanded. 
In  1732  he  had  submitted  to  the  Bishop  of  London  certain  pro- 
posals looking  towards  a  "comprehension"  of  the  colonists 
under  episcopal  government,  but  without  imposing  "all  the 
ceremonies  and  constitutions  of  our  Church."  Such  proposals 
he  had  been  asked  by  several  of  his  Congregational  friends  to 
draw  up,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  he  would  have  been 
ready  to  unite  with  them  and  other  Christians  on  the  broad 
basis  laid  down  by  our  Bishops  a  century  and  a  half  later,  of  the 
Scriptures,  the  Creed,  the  two  Sacraments  and  the  Historic 
Episcopate.  It  is,  moreover,  a  very  reasonable  conjecture  that 
Thomas  Ruggles  of  Guilford  was  one  of  the  "several  ingenious 
men  among  the  dissenters"  who  seemed  to  have  thought  a  com- 
prehension possible.  In  the  following  year  (1733)  when,  after 
a  long  and  bitter  struggle,  the  now  extinct  Fourth  Church  had 
practically  achieved  its  independence,  the  First  Society  protested 
against  a  recent  attempt  of  the  legislature  to  impose  the  decis- 
ion of  a  council  convoked  by  itself  upon  the  church,  and 
appealed  to  the  opinion  of  a  high  authority  in  England  that  the 
calling  of  synods  by  the  colonial  assemblies  was  "a  breach  of 
the  royal  prerogative."  Towards  the  end  of  the  same  year 
(Dec.  10,  1733,)  Mr.  Johnson  wrote  to  the  Bishop  of  London  on 
the  same  subject  at  the  request  of  some  "dissenting  minis- 


22  l-'.arly  History  of 

ters."1  It  is  almost  impossible  to  doubt  that  Mr.  Ruggles,  who 
must  have  known  Johnson,  about  eight  years  his  senior, 
from  childhood,  was  one  of  these  ministers,  and  very  easy  to 
believe  that  the  two  had  previously  discussed  the  question  of 
comprehension.  And  if  Thomas  Ruggles,  who  long  afterwards 
declared  his  people  members  of  the  Church  of  England  by  in- 
heritance, was  at  this  period  thinking  kindly  of  a  possible  rec- 
ognition of  him  and  them  on  the  generous  terms  suggested  by 
Samuel  Johnson,  we  can  well  believe  that  the  latter  would  not 
have  been  eager  to  promote  a  second  separation  from  his  Con- 
gregational brother's  flock. 

But  a  deeper  and  more  powerful  influence  than  the  senior 
missionary's  fair  dream  of  comprehension  kept  in  check  the 
impulse  towards  conformity  in  his  native  town.  Long 
before  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  under  the 
famous  "Halfway  Covenant,"  the  sacraments  had  been  made 
more  accessible.  Those  who  "owned  the  covenant,"  that  is, 
formally  acknowledged  the  obligations  imposed  in  baptism, 
might  then  bring  their  children  to  be  baptized,  or  even  obtain 
baptism  for  themselves  if  necessary.  In  Massachusetts,  though 
never,  I  think,  in  Connecticut,  it  became  common  to  allow  such 
persons,  while  supposed  to  be  still  unconverted,  to  receive  the 
communion.  The  mistake  of  using  improper  tests  of  conversion 
was  sought  to  be  remedied  by  treating  conversion  itself  as  not 
essential  in  the  visible  church."  The  Halfway  Covenant  was  a 
wrong  method  of  righting  a  wrong.  Nevertheless,  it  went  far 
towards  silencing  complaint,  and  keeping  Congregationalists 
within  the  Puritan  fold.  It  did  not  wholly  remove  the  griev- 
ance, and  in  Connecticut  it  came  into  use  rather  slowly,  so  that 
the  early  missionaries  were  met  at  once  with  requests  for  one  or 
both  sacraments.11  But  the  religious  life  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury was  everywhere  comparatively  feeble  on  the  side  of  the 
affections,  and  it  is  evident  that  the  desire  for  the  highest  Chris- 

1  Conn.  C/i.  /><>,. \.  i.  151-4,  155-6;  MS.  of   Hon.  Ralph  D.  Smith,  relating   chiefly  to  the 
Fourth  Church. 

2  Mather's  .l/</jsr;;..  ii.  277-315;  Stoddard's  Appeal  to  tit,-   Isarneii  ;  TrumbulTs    Hist,  of 
(  'min..  i.  297,  312,  471-2;  ii.  19,  143;   Conlrihut.  to  Kcrlrs.  Hist,  of  Conn..    411  ;  Palfrey's    Hist, 
of  .\fu  KiiKlaint   ii.4S7-94;  Dutton's    Hist,   of  .\orth  Cli..  \fu~  Haven,  10,  11-13,  "2^-7 :  etc., 
etc. 

3  Trutnbull.  Hist.  »/O»m.,  i.  477;  <«„„.    CA.  Docs.,  i.   10.  ir,  17,  19,  21,,  -,9.  2S~, :  ii.  8.  29, 
31.  55,  134.  "69- 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Gnilford,   Conn.  23 

tian  privilege,  that  of  admission  to  the  Lord's  Supper,  was  not 
strong.  It  was  indeed  still  regarded  as  much  more  than  a  priv- 
ilege, and  in  1732  forty-six  persons  in  Guilford,  who  had 
preaching  but  not  the  sacraments,  complained  that  their  souls 
were  suffering  because  "the  spiritual  food  thereof  was  denied 
them.'"  But  during  sixteen  years  after  that  date  the  number 
of  communicants  in  the  First  Church  slightly  decreased.  It 
apparently  continued  to  decrease  for  half  a  century  longer," 
although  most  of  the  adult  members  of  that  congregation  had 
probably  "owned  the  covenant,"  therein  pledging  themselves  to 
"endeavor  to  observe  all"  the  laws  of  God's  kingdom  (which 
certainly  included  the  use  of  the  second  sacrament),  "so  far," 
in  the  words  of  the  formula,  "as  he  hitherto  hath  or  hereafter 
shall  discover  your  duty  to  you."3 

In  many  communities  the  great  revival  of  1740,  which,  for 
the  time,  intensified  religious  emotions,  and  which  ultimately 
brought  new  power  into  American  Christianity,  made  the  rela- 
tion of  experiences  easy  for  multitudes,  and  these  flocked  into 
the  Congregational  churches.  It  was,  however,  attended  by 
gross  excesses,  and  by  a  narrowness  and  censoriousness  which 
some  of  its  warm  friends  confessed  and  deplored.  In  this  way 
it  promoted  the  growth  of  the  Church  of  England,  in  which 
large  numbers  of  conservative  Christians  sought  a  less  heated 
atmosphere.  But  in  Guilford  the  influence  of  Mr.  Ruggles  was 
conscientiously  thrown  against  the  revivalists,  as  was  that  of  Sam- 
uel Smithson's  son-in-law,  Samuel  Russell,  in  North  Guilford.4 
With  regard  to  opposition  to  a  revival  like  that  of  1740,  on 
the  part  of  good  men,  it  is  worth  while  to  quote  the  words  of  the 
late  Dr.  Charles  Hodge,  a  very  eminent  Presbyterian:  "It  is 
well  that  there  are  such  opposers,  else  the  church  would  soon  be 
over-run  with  fanaticism."5  Mr.  Ruggles  seems  to  have  been 
successful  in  his  opposition,  as  far  as  his  own  church  was  con- 
cerned, and  he  doubtless  thereby  kept  the  allegiance  of  mam-  who 
might  have  become  conformists.  In  the  Fourth  Society,  occu- 

1  Sni  it h  MS. 

2  fbitl.;  Manual  i>f  I'irst  Ci»ii;ivifa(ii»ial  Church. 

3  "Form  of  owning  the  Baptismal  Covenant."  in  the  handwriting  of  Rev.  Aaron  Out- 
ton,  but  without  date.     Kindly  copied  for  me  by  Mr.  Wallace  I).  Norton. 

4  Declaration  of  tin-  Association  of  the  County  »/\NV.v  Harcn,  etc.  (1745). 

5  Historv  of  tin-  I'rfsbytcriaii  Church.  Pt.  II..  12.  Phil..  1851. 


24  Early  History  of 

pyingthe  same  territory  with  the  First,  owning  the  covenant  was 
apparently  not  practiced  until  1750,  nor  continued  after  1771.' 
In  1743,  a  year  before  our  organization,  James  Sproat,  an  able 
man,  and  a  warm  friend  of  the  revival,  became  pastor,  and 
retained  that  position  for  twenty-five  years.''  Some  members  of 
his  congregation  were  early  supporters  of  this  parish,  and  it  is 
not  impossible  that  it  was  Mr.  Sproat's  zeal  for  the  methods  of 
the  revivalists  which  gave  the  final  impulse  to  the  cause  of  con- 
formity. 

On  the  whole,  the  spirit  of  eighteenth  century  piety,  real, 
but  not  very  emotional,  was  strong  in  Guilford.  Towards  the 
close  of  the  century,  when  the  Fourth  Church  had  just  dismissed 
its  last  pastor  and  begun  to  decay  (1789),  the  excellent  pioneer 
of  New  England  Methodism,  Jesse  L,ee,  reported  "some  lively 
Christians"  here  "of  the  Baptist  persuasion,"  as  if  the  Guilford 
Congregationalists  did  not  conform  to  his  standard  of  liveliness, 
which  is  more  than  probable.3  The  Church  of  England  was. 
therefore,  less  in  request  than  it  often  was  elsewhere  as  a  "haven 
of  refuge  ;  "  it  attracted  the  most  earnest  of  the  class  excluded  by 
contemporary  Congregationalism  from  the  Holy  Table,  with 
such  as  might  become  convinced  that  not  Congregationalism 
but  Episcopacy  is  the  kind  of  church  government  "exactly  de- 
scribed in  the  Word  of  God."4  Accessions  on  both  grounds 
were  to  be  looked  for  from  among  the  friends  and  kindred  of 
Samuel  Johnson.  And  it  is  a  pleasant  thought  that  the  wish  to 
receive  the  communion,  as  a  duty  and  a  right,  was  one  of  the 
chief  forces  which  produced  this  parish.  It  is  to  be  observed, 
moreover,  that  the  denial,  in  some  places,  of  the  first  sacrament, 
and  of  the  second  everywhere,  to  those  from  whom  the  Church 
of  England,  even  when  controlled  by  Puritans,  had  never  with- 
held them,  abundantly  justified  the  Society  for  the  Propagation 
of  the  Gospel  in  planting  missions  in  this  Christian  common- 
wealth. For  within  its  borders  were  great  numbers  of  the  King's 
"loveing  subjects,"  suffering  that  want  of  "the  Administration 
of  God's  Sacraments"  which  the  society's  charter  required  it  to 
supply. 

1  Smith  MS. 

2  Smith,  f/islnry  i>f  Guilford,  100-102  :  Sprague,  Annals  of  the  A»i,->-ica>/  I'ulpit.  iii.  125-9. 
;,  Stevens.  History  of  the  .^ffffiodist  Episcopal  Church,  ii.  428. 

4  See  "Cambridge  Platform,''  Chap.  I.,  3. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  25 

Jonathan  Arnold,  as  in  a  loose  sense,  the  first  missionary 
for  Xe\v  Haven  county,  may  be  regarded  as  the  first  appointed 
for  Guilford,  which  it  is  nearly  certain  that  he  visited  as  early 
as  the  spring  of  1738.  In  1740  he  was  succeeded  in  his  mission 
by  Theophilus  Morris,  an  Englishman  who  also  lived  at  West 
Haven.1  It  was  not  as  easy  then  as  now,  when  far  more  fre- 
quent intercourse  with  the  \vorld  tends  to  make  everybody  less 
provincial,  for  men  of  foreign  birth  and  training  to  adapt  them- 
selves to  the  ways  of  Connecticut  people.  Mr.  Morris  had  diffi- 
culties for  which  his  personal  qualities,  rather  than  his  English 
nativity,  were  responsible, y  but  he  did  some  good  work  in  his 
mission.  I  find  no  record  of  visits  made  by  him  at  Guilford, 
but  as  he  had  the  oversight  of  the  Wallingford  conformists  he 
probably  came  here.3  In  1743  what  we  may  call  the  New  Ha- 
ven county  mission  passed  into  the  care  of  the  clergyman  under 
whose  guidance  the  parish  was  organized,  the  Rev.  James. 
Lyons,  a  native  of  Ireland,  who  resided  at  Derby.  Once  more 
the  missionary's  foreign  birth  was  a  disadvantage  to  him,  and 
he  suffered  from  it  in  ways  far  more  discreditable  to  others  than 
to  himself.  But,  although  he  was  diligent  and  useful,  he  had 
an  infirmity  of  temper  which  long  afterwards  exposed  him  to 
severe  and  just  censure.4 

Mr.  Lyons  visited  Guilford  presumably  in  1743,  and  cer- 
tainly made  several  visits  before  the  parish  was  organized, 
preaching  and  administering  baptism.  About  four  months 
before  the  organization  (May  8,  1744,),  Dr.  Johnson  (as  he  had 
now  become)  preached  a  week-day  sermon  here,  the  manuscript 
of  which  is,  by  the  kindness  of  his  descendants,  in  my  posses- 
sion. It  is  extremely  interesting  to  students  of  the  history  of 
theology,  as  showing  that  Johnson  had  departed  from  the  ordi- 
nary Protestant  view  of  the  great  doctrine  of  justification,  and 
had  accepted  the  teaching  of  a  famous  Anglican  divine,  Bishop 
Bull.  That  teaching  might  tempt  men  to  overrate  the  value  of 
their  own  obedience,  but  it  required  nobody  to  be  self-righteous, 
and  might,  on  the  other  hand,  guard  some  against  the  tempta- 


1  Digest  of  Records  of  S.  P.  G.,  1701-1892;  Beardsley,  Hist,  of  Ch.  in  Conn.,  i.  115-7. 

2  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  i.  198-202  ;  Beardsley,  Hist,  etc.,  i.  135-6. 

3  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  i.  138-9  (misplaced),  176,  202. 

4  Digest  of  Kec.   of  S.  P.  G.,  853;   Conn.  C/i.  Docs.,  i.  102,  208-10;  ii.  51,  67,  126-7;   Cluist 
Church  Records. 


26  Early  History  of 

tion  to  which  the  revivalists  were  greatly  exposed,  of  attaching 
too  little  importance  to  personal  holiness.  But  the  sermon,  as 
far  as  it  influenced  their  religious  thinking,  would  have  helped 
to  remove  the  early  Episcopalians  of  Guilford  farther  from  the 
sympathy  of  many  of  their  fellow  Christians. 

On  the  day  on  which  this  sermon  was  preached,  Mr.  Lyons 
wrote  from  Derby  to  the  secretary  of  the  Venerable  Society  to 
the  effect  that  eight  families  in  Guilford,  embracing  thirty-six 
children,  had  subscribed  a  paper  declaring  their  conformity.1 
If  we  knew  when  this  paper  was  signed  we  should  have  the  date 
of  what  was  perhaps  the  first  step  towards  organization.  And  if 
we  knew  who  signed  it  we  should  have  the  names  of  those  who 
effected  the  organization.  Now  a  letter  to  the  Society  in  Eng- 
land from  the  churchwardens  at  Wallingford,  dated  December 
i,  1743,  being  written  "on  behalf"  also  of  "brethren  inhabit- 
ing in  the  neighboring  towns  of  Guilford  and  Branford,": 
makes  it  probable  that  there  had  already  been  some  sort  of  joint 
action  here,  and  possibly  the  declaration  of  conformity  was 
made  towards  the  close  of  1743.  And  it  so  happens  that  we  get 
from  our  own  records  and  otherwise,  the  names  of  exactly  eight 
men,  heads  of  families,  who  had  in  various  ways  indicated  their 
disposition  to  accept  the  ministrations  of  the  Church  of  England 
before  May,  1744.  It  is  not  certain  that  all  these  men  lived  in 
Guilford,  still  less  that  all  lived  in  this  part  of  the  township, 
but  it  is  a  fair  inference  from  what  we  do  know  that  the  major- 
ity were  present  at  the  so-called  "vestry"  at  which  the  first 
churchwardens  and  clerk  were  appointed.  Five  of  these  names 
have  been  mentioned  already,  those  of  the  three  officials,  Na- 
thaniel Johnson,  William  Ward,  and  Samuel  Collins,  and  those 
of  Thomas  Walstone  and  David  Naughty,  in  whose  households 
at  Branford  and  Guilford  baptism  had  been  administered.  The 
three  remaining  names  are  those  of  Caleb  Wetmore,  Abijah 
Watrous  (or  Waterhouse)  and  Hezekiah  Bishop,  all  parents  of 
children  baptized  in  Guilford.3 

You  would,  of  course,  like  to  know  something  of  those  who 
bore    a   part  in   founding  the  parish,  or  in  carrying  it  through 


1  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  i.  2oS. 

2  ('mill.    (.'/I.    /W.v.,  i.   202. 

T,  I'hrift  Ch.  KIT.;  AVy/.v/rr  /iw>k,  Stratford. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  27 

the  hard  struggles  of  its  first  half  century.  It  is  impossible,  in 
some  cases  for  want  of  material,  in  others  for  want  of  time,  to 
give  information  full  enough  to  be  interesting  or  valuable.  I 
feel  bound,  however,  to  tell  as  much  of  what  I  have  been  able 
to  learn  about  the  founders  as  my  limits  will  permit. 

Nathaniel  Johnson,  brother  of  the  distinguished  clergyman 
of  whom  I  have  spoken  so  often,  was  an  important  member,  not 
only  of  the  parish,  but  of  the  community.  In  becoming  an 
Episcopalian  he  probably  gave  offence  to  many  of  his  townsmen, 
but  it  is  creditable  to  him  and  to  them  that  he  evidently  retain- 
ed their  confidence  and  respect.  Within  about  eight  years  he 
was  commissioned  first  lieutenant,  and  then  captain,  of  the 
local  military  company.  And  he  seems  to  have  marched  at  the 
head  of  it  when  Connecticut,  having  already  furnished  fourteen 
hundred  men,  sent  out  five  thousand  more  after  the  disaster  at 
Fort  William  Henry  in  1757.*  He  was  connected  somewhat 
closely  by  blood  or  marriage  with  at  least  eight  families  appar- 
ently belonging  to  this  congregation  in  the  last  centunr.  His 
first  wife,  Margery  Morgan,  the  mother  of  his  children,  was  a 
descendant  of  Governor  Eaton,  and  had  near  relatives  who  must 
have  been  the  principal  supporters  of  the  congregation  after- 
wards formed  in  Killingworth.  His  second  wife,  Diana,  the 
daughter  of  Captain  Andrew  Ward,  and  widow  of  Daniel  Hub- 
bard,  was  the  mother  of  Rev.  Dr.  Bela  Hubbard,  of  whom  I 
must  speak  later.  Captain  Johnson's  son,  Samuel,  married  the 
daughter  of  Samuel  Collins,  and  their  descendant,  Samuel  Col- 
lins Johnson,  is  still  remembered  with  honor  in  the  parish  and 
the  town."  Descendants  of  other  names  are  with  us,  one  being 
•our  junior  warden. 

Of  others  I  must  speak  more  briefly.  William  Ward  was 
the  son  of  William  Ward  of  Wallingford,  and  nephew  of  An- 
drew Ward  of  Guilford.  His  appointment  as  second  warden, 
and  the  fact  that  the  parish  was  organized  in  his  house,  mark 
him  as  a  valuable  member  of  the  little  company.  He  has,  I 
believe,  descendants  of  the  name  living  elsewhere.  Samuel 
Collins,  a  descendant,  through  his  mother,  of  Governor  L,eete, 

1  Connecticut  Colonial  Ki'cords.  ix.  420;  x.  128;  Trumbull,   Hist,  of  Conn.,  ii.  3X2  ;   Guil- 
Jord  Celebration.  \^.     (Paper  of  Bernard  C.  Steiner,  Ph.  D.) 

2  Talcott's  Guilford  Genealogy  (MS.),  etc. 


28  Early  History  of 

had  been  a  collector  of  rates  in  the  First  Society,  and  in  the 
discharge  of  his  official  duty  had  been  required  to  enforce  pay- 
ment thirteen  years  before  on  the  separatists  from  that  Society, 
who  established  the  Fourth.1  I  think  that  none  of  his  posterity 
now  reside  here.  Among  those  found  in  other  places  is  at 
least  one  clergyman,  also  descended  from  Nathaniel  Johnson." 
Thomas  Walstone  must  have  removed  from  Branford  to  Guil- 
ford  before  IJ47.3  He  interests  us  as  the  earliest  of  the  Guil- 
ford  conformists,  as  far  as  yet  appears  from  the  records.  He  is 
now  represented  among  our  communicants.  David  Naughty 's 
name  survives  in  various  traditions,  and  his  house  seems  to 
have  stood  nearly  where  this  church  now  stands.  The  first 
baptisms  known  to  have  been  performed  here  were  those  of  two 
of  his  servants  (1739) .  He  had  been  one  of  the  founders  of  the 
Fourth  Societ}-,  and  in  his  old  age  he  apparently  became  an 
attendant  at  the  First  Church/  Of  Caleb  Wetmore,  as  of  Hez- 
ekiah  Bishop,  I  have  not  searched  the  town  records  far 
enough  to  secure  other  information.  Abijah  Watrous  (the 
name  appears  in  several  forms,  being  long  a  prominent  one) 
was  the  son-in-law  of  William  Ward.  These  frequent  relation- 
ships among  members  of  the  congregation  show  hew  the  parish 
extended  itself  along  family  lines. 

The  fourth  of  September,  old  style,  was  a  Tuesday,  and 
Mr.  Lyons  may  have  come  hither  from  Wallingford,  after  hav- 
ing officiated  there  on  Sunday.  If  so,  and  observing  that  Wil- 
liam Ward's  father,  of  the  same  name,  was  then  living  in 
Wallingford,  we  see  why  Mr.  Lyons,  in  the  memorandum  pre- 
sumably made  by  him,  (accessible  to  you  all  in  a  facsimile,) 
first  wrote,  "at  the  house  of  William  Ward  in  Wallingford," 
afterwards  erasing  the  last  word  and  substituting  "Gilford." 
This  house,  the  birthplace  of  the  parish,  stood  very  near  the 
present  residence  of  Miss  Annette  Fowler,  in  Whitfield  street, 
facing  the  Green,  near  the  northwest  corner.  It  was  on  the 
home  lot  of  Edward  Benton,  an  early  settler  who  has  many  de- 
scendants in  our  parish.  Immediately  west  was  the  home  lot  of 


1  Smith  MS. 

2  The  Rev.  Samuel  Johnson  French,  late  rector  at  Sayre,  Penn. 
.;  Christ  Ch.  Records. 

4  Smith  .1/.V..-  Record  of  the  Votes,  etc. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  29 

John  Hoadly,  on  which,  doubtless,  were  born,  a  century  before, 
(1643  and  1650)  the  brothers,  Samuel  and  John  Hoadly,  who- 
both  died  clergymen  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  the  elder  of 
whom  became  the  father  of  Benjamin  Hoadly,  who  died  Bishop  of 
Winchester,  and  John  Hoadly,  who  died  Archbishop  of  Armagh.1 
Next  west  was  the  home  lot  which  passed,  in  1648,  into  the 
hands  of  George  Hubbard,  whose  descendants,  members  of  this 
congregation,  still  live  on  it,  and  on  which  Bela  Hubbard,  so 
long  reverenced  by  Episcopalians  here  and  in  New  Haven,  was 
born  a  few  years  before  the  organization  (1739).  The  first 
owner  of  this  home  lot  was  Jacob  Sheaffe,  grandson  of  William 
Wilson,  canon  of  Windsor,  who  married  the  niece  of  Edmund 
Grindal,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.'  One  of  his  sisters,  the 
wife  of  William  Chittenden  (another  being  the  wife  of  Henry 
Whitfield),  lived  in  the  next  house  to  the  west.  A  neighbor- 
hood having  so  many  associations  with  the  Church  of  England 
and  episcopacy  was  a  very  proper  one  for  the  nativity  of  a  con- 
gregation which  not  only  claimed  to  be  a  part  of  the  Church  of 
England,  but  accepted  episcopal  government. 

In  the  record  of  this  first  parish  meeting,  the  wardens  and 
clerk  are  said  to  have  been  "appointed,"  as  also  in  1746,  Mr. 
Lyons  being  again  present  as  "Minister."  Later,  the  word 
"chosen"  is  used.  The  English  canons  gave  the  minister  the 
appointment  of  one  warden  and  of  the  clerk,  (who  then  led,  or 
made,  the  responses,  and  led  the  singing).  What  powers  Mr. 
Lyons  exercised  in  this  case  may,  perhaps,  be  inferred  from  the 
fact  that  within  a  year  he  personally  appointed  the  wardens  at 
Middletown.3  There  were  at  first  no  vestrymen,  and  none  are 
mentioned  until  1750.  The  resolution  now  adopted  to  hold  ser- 
vice "by  themselves"  implied  lay  reading,  since  they  would  not 
often  expect  the  presence  of  a  clergyman.  And  by  means  of 
lay  reading  chiefly,  or  largely,  worship  and  religious  instruction 
were  maintained  in  this  parish  for  almost  a  century,  or  until 


1  Letter  of  Charles  J.  Hoadley,  L  L.  D.;  sketch  prefixed  to  Works  of  Bishop  Benja- 
min Hoadly. 

2  Sprague,  Annak,  etc.,  i.  12-13;  Capt.  C.  H.  Towushend.  in  New  Haven  Journal  and: 
Courifr.  June  26  and  July  15.  is^4. 

3  Istt.ofS.P.  G.    (Harwood   MS.),  vol.  B.  13.  (136),  quoted  by   Dr.   Harwood  in   his. 
"Historical  Address,"  Sunday,  Dec.  30,    1894;    compare   Conn.    Ch.   Socs.  i.   41.    161,   296. 
The  wardens  of  1768  describe  the  action  of  1744  as  "the  choice  of  Churchwardens   and. 
appointment  of  a  Clerk."     Ibid..  ii.  127. 


30  Early  History  of 

your  late  honored  rector,  Dr.  Bennett,  began  his  earlier  minis- 
try in  1834,  and  the  parish,  for  the  first  time,  had  the  exclusive 
use  of  its  clergyman's  services.  The  traditions  of  the  congre- 
gation affirm  that  the  church,  when  built,  was  never  closed  on 
Sunday,  and  it  is  known  that  weekly  worship  and  the  observ- 
ance of  Holy  Days  were  maintained  from  the  time  of  organization 
with  scarcely  an  interruption,  for  man}-  years,  through  the  zeal 
and  fidelity  of  laymen.1 

It  is  convenient  to  divide  the  history  of  the  parish,  as  or- 
ganized, into  five  periods.  The  first  period,  of  about  six  years, 
extending  from  1744  to  1750,  was  one  in  which  the  administra- 
tion of  the  parish  was,  properly  speaking,  in  the  hands  of  lay- 
men. Mr.  Lyons  rendered  most  important  services,  and  was, 
not  unnaturally,  regarded  by  the  people  as  their  "Minister." 
But  it  appears  that  Guilford  was  not  named  in  his  commission 
from  the  Venerable  Society,  and  that  he  had  not  the  rights  of  a 
settled  minister  before  the  law.  Technically  the  parish  was 
vacant  until  1750,  as  it  often  was  practically  long  afterwards. 
Mr.  Lyons  came  to  Guilford  three  or  four  times  before  the  close 
•of  the  year  1746,  when  he  probably  removed  to  Long  Island, 
and  he  made  one  visit  later."  Dr.  Johnson  visited  the  parish  at 
intervals  of  a  few  months,  apparently,  and  he  was  not  the  only 
•clerical  visitor.  But  apart  from  this,  worship  must  have  been 
conducted  by  members  of  the  congregation.  Among  the  first 
lay-readers,  as  he  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  of  the  pioneers 
of  episcopacy  in  Guilford,  was,  presumably,  Mr.  Edmund 
Ward.  As  he  was  "appointed"  churchwarden  along  with  Mr. 
•Samuel  Collins  in  April,  1746,  he  may  be  supposed  to  have 
joined  the  parish  as  early  as  1745,  and  he  was,  not  improbably, 
one  of  its  founders.  He  was  the  son  of  Captain  Andrew  Ward, 
graduated  at  Yale  College  in  1727  (his  name  standing  third  in 
a  class  of  ten,  as  indicative  of  his  social  position),  and  was  or- 
dained as  first  pastor  of  the  Fourth  Church,  September  21, 
1733,  after  having  preached  to  the  congregation  for  two  or  three 
years.  His  pastorate  seems  to  have  lasted  but  little  more  than 
a  year,  and  in  1735  he  ceased  to  be  a  minister.  The  causes, 


1  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  126. 

2  Christ  Ch.  Kec.;  Lett,  of  S.  P.  C.  (Harvvood  MS  )  vol.  B.  13   (136)  ;    Conn.  Cli.  Do 
237,  ii.  127;  Dig.  of  S.  P.  G.  Kec.  848,  853. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  31 

though  not  fulh-  stated,  were  such  as  would  doubtless  have 
prevented  him  for  applying  for  orders  in  the  Church  of  England, 
had  he  wished  at  a  later  date  to  do  so.  They  did  not  destroy 
his  usefulness  as  a  citizen,  and  in  after  years  he  more  than  once 
served  as  a  selectman,  and  represented  the  town  several  times 
in  the  Legislature.1  Still  less  could  they  permanently  exclude 
him  from  the  privileges  of  the  church,  though  ten  years  had 
passed  since  the  events  which  led  to  his  removal  from  the  min- 
istry before  he  is  known  to  have  appeared  as  conformist. 
Thenceforth  he  evidently  was,  and  deserved  to  be,  honored  and 
trusted  in  this  parish. 

But  while  he  and  others  were  well  qualified  to  act  as  lay- 
readers,  it  had  long  been  customary  in  Connecticut  to  employ 
young  men  who  were  preparing  to  take  orders,  or  had  serious 
thoughts  of  doing  so.a  And  at  length,  perhaps  in  1748,  such  a 
reader  was  found  for  Guilford  in  the  person  of  "Mr.  Samuel 
Johnson."3  This  I  take  to  have  been  the  elder  son  of  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Johnson,  William  Samuel,  wrho  hesitated  between  divinity 
and  law,  and  wrho  for  several  years  acted  as  a  lay-reader  else- 
where. His  task  may  be  assumed  to  have  included  those  of 
catechist  and  of  a  kind  of  lay-pastor,  and  he  spent  six  months 
in  the  service  of  the  parish..*  He  became  one  of  the  most  use- 
ful, as  he  was  nearly  or  quite  the  most  accomplished,  of  early 
American  statesmen,  and  it  interests  us  to  think  of  such  a  man 
as  probably  fulfilling  a  lay-ministry  in  this  congregation  during 
the  first  period  of  its  history.  His  brother  William,  who  did 
take  orders,  but  died  in  England  in  1756,  also  read  service  here 
occasionally. '"'  But  the  young  man  who  acted  longest  in  this 
capacity  was  Peter  Beers.  He,  as  the  wardens  write  in  1768, 
"continued  with  us  better  than  twelve  months,  to  our  great  sat- 
isfaction."" This  gentleman  was  probably  a  youthful  parish- 
ioner of  Dr.  Johnson's,  resident  in  what  is  now  the  town  of 
Trumbull,  though  I  have  not  been  able  to  find  proof  of  his  hav- 


1  Smith  MS.;    'r<r.cn  Records;  Hist,  of  Guilford,  100,  169. 

2  Cniiii.  C/i.  ihics..  i.  148. 

3  Ibid.,  ii.  12-. 

4  Beardsley's  Life  and  Times  of  ll'illiam  Samuel  Johnson,  4-6. 

5  Conn.  C/i.  Docs.,  i.  252. 

6  Conn.  C/i.  Docs.,  ii.  127. 


32  Early  History  of 

ing  been  either  a  student  or  a  candidate  for  orders.1     He  must 
have  officiated  at  Guilforcl  not  far  from  1750. 

During  this  period  the  parish  was  making  progress.  Mr. 
I/yons  wrote  to  the  Society,  under  date  of  May  30,  1745  :  "The 
Church  at  Gilford  .  .  .  increases.  I  administer  the  sac- 
raments there,  and  they  read  Prayers  and  Sermons. ":  Earl}-  in 
1749  Dr.  Johnson  reports  eighteen  families  of  conformists  at 
Guilford,3  and  our  records  contain  the  names  of  fourteen  new 
householders,  as  I  suppose,  in  addition  to  the  eight  already 
mentioned.  But  only  twelve  names  appear  in  a  list  of  rate- 
payers preserved  among  our  documents,  and  dated  1750.  This 
is  the  surest  indication  of  the  strength  of  the  congregation  at 
the  close  of  the  first  period.  A  new  parish  was  struggling  into 
life  in  North  Guilford,  under  the  leadership  of  Dr.  Johnson's 
brother-in-law,  Deacon  George  Bartlett,  and  it  is  more  than 
probable  that  Dr.  Johnson  included  its  members  in  his  enumer- 
ation. Some  of  the  names  recorded  in  connection  with  Guilford 
certainly  belonged  to  Branford.^  The  new  family  names  which 
may  be  reasonably  claimed  for  this  parish  are,  in  the  order  of 
occurrence,  those  of  Kimberly,  Fraser,  Judge,  Norton,  Pierson, 
Dowd,  Welch  and  Chittenden.  Some  names  may  be  those  of 
parents  who  sought  baptism  for  their  children  only  because 
they  could  not  obtain  it  in  their  own  congregations.  The 
Fourth  Church  did  not  formally  grant  this  privilege  to  non- 
communicants  until  1750,  and  in  1746  seven  children  of  Thomas 
Norton,  son  of  one  of  the  founders  of  that  church,  and  a  gradu- 
ate of  Yale,  were  baptized  by  Dr.  Johnson,5  the  eldest  being 
fourteen  years  old."  In  this  case,  as  in  man}'  others,  the  desire 
to  secure  the  Christian  rights  of  childhood  probably  led  to  full 
conformity,  as  Mr.  Norton's  descendants  are  still  represented  in 
our  congregation.  Among  the  other  new  names  I  can  speak 
particularly  only  of  those  of  Ebenezer  Chittenden  and  his  son 
Ebenezer.  The  former  was  a  brother-in-law  of  the  two  John- 


1  Letters  from  Profs.  H.  A.  Beers  and  F.  B.  Dexter,  Rev.  N.  E.  Cornwall.  Messrs.  D. 
G.,  J.  B.  and  LeGrand  G.  Beers,  and  Mr.  M.  D.  Mallett. 

2  Utt.  of  S.  P.  G.  (Harwood  MS.),  vol.  B.  13.  (136.) 

3  Conn.  Ch.  Docs,,  i.  251. 

4  Those,  for  example,  of  Micha  Palmer,  Ebenezer  Linsley  and  John  Factor,  entered 
in  the  register  at  Stratford. 

5  Registry  Book,  Christ  Ch.,  Stratford. 

6  Talcott's  Guilford  Genealogy. 


Christ  Chitrch  Parish,  Gidlford,    Conn.  33 

sons,  and  his  conformity  is  probably  another  illustration  of  the 
influence  of  that  family.  The  son  who  bore  his  name  removed 
to  New  Haven,  where  he  became  a  warden  of  Trinity  Church, 
and  his  inventive  genius  brought  him  into  association  with  the 
famous  Eli  Whitney.1  Another  son,  Thomas,  was  for  about 
twenty  years  governor  of  Vermont,  and  in  that  capacity  he 
narrowly  missed  being  invited  to  consecrate  a  bishop  in  the 
person  of  the  Rev.  Samuel  Peters,  author  of  an  astonishing 
"History  of  Connecticut,"  and  inventor  of  the  "Blue  Laws." 
Another  son  was  Bethuel,  a  very  useful  clergyman  of  Vermont, 
who  strenuously  and  openly  opposed  the  election  of  Dr.  Peters 
to  the  episcopate.3  The  family  lived  in  East  Guilford  (now 
Madison),  but  the  sons  must  have  been,  in  their  boyhood,  mem- 
bers of  this  congregation. 

The  great  achievement  of  the  first  period  was  the  erection 
of  a  church,  though  it  was  not  quite  finished  so  early,  and  was 
not  entirely  furnished  until  many  years  later.  The  first  record- 
ed action  on  the  part  of  the  parish  is  the  decision  to  build  the 
church  by  subscription,  and  the  appointment  of  a  committee, 
the  record  being  followed  by  the  original  subscription-list, 
which  contains  but  six  names.  The  date  as  given  is  January  2, 
1746,  which,  according  to  the  legal  usage  at  that  time,  corre- 
sponds to  the  second  (or,  more  exactly,  the  thirteenth)  of  Janu- 
ary, I747-4  The  next  step  recorded  was  not  taken  by  the  parish 
but  by  the  meeting  of  proprietors,  or  owners  of  undivided  lands, 
including  the  Green.  That  body  voted,  April  13, 5  1747,  "upon 
petition  of  Messrs.  Samuel  Collens,  Nathaniel  Johnson  and  Ed- 
mund Ward,"  that  they  might  build  a  church  on  the  Green, 
"on  the  knowl  before  Mr.  Naughty's  House,  nearest  to  the 
Middle  Path.""  The  petitioners  named  formed  the  committee 
appointed  by  the  parish  to  "carry  on"  the  work,  and  this  was 


1  Talcott's  Chittenden  Family ;  New  Haven  Colony  Historical  Society  Papers,  i.  60,  73. 

2  Documentary  History  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  Vermont,  43. 

3  Ibid.  21,  43. 

4  Until  after  September  2,  1751,  the  year  began  on  the  25th  of   March,  in   the   British 
dominions,  while  all  dates  were  eleven  days  earlier  (for  the  eighteenth  century)  than 
in  most  European  countries.    But  it  had  long  been  common  to  use  a  double  date  for  the 
year  (as  174  5-6),  and  sometimes  new  style  was  followed  without  notice,  a  very  perplex- 
ing circumstance  to  modern  readers. 

5  Old  style,  which  I  generally  follow  as  to  the  day  of  the  month. 

6  Proprietors'  Records,  vol.  D.;  p.  131.    Since  the  address  was  delivered,  it  has  been 
found  necessary  to  correct  the  dates  at  this  point. 


34  Early  History  of 

the  first  meeting  held  by  the  Proprietors  since  their  appoint- 
ment. There  appears  to  have  been  no  reluctance  on  the  part  of 
the  Proprietors  to  grant  such  a  privilege  to  Episcopalians,  and. 
there  was  certainly  no  strong  disposition  to  crush  the  move- 
ment towards  conformity. 

The  first  subscriptions  amounted  to  ,£270,  four  of  the  sub- 
scribers pledging  each  ^50.  The  names  are  those  of  John  Col- 
lins, Ebenezer  Bishop,  Samuel  Collins,  Nathaniel  Johnson, 
Edmund  Ward,  and  William  Ward.  John  Collins,  who  has  not: 
been  named  before,  was,  I  suppose,  the  brother  of  Samuel,  and 
one  of  the  original  members  of  the  Fourth  Church.  He  was  at 
this  time  residing  in  North  Guilford.1  Ebenezer  Bishop. 
was  the  son  of  Nathaniel  Bishop,  and  married  Meheta- 
bel,  the  daughter  of  Joseph  Chittenden.  He,  also,  became 
a  resident  of  North  Guilford.2  Most  of  these  subscribers, 
paid  more  than  they  promised,  besides  afterwards  en- 
larging their  subscriptions.  Many  others  contributed  as  the 
work  went  forward,  including  some  who  may  not  have  become 
Episcopalians,  and  more  who  were  non-residents.  A  generous. 
Killingworth  contributor  was  Mr.  Benjamin  Gale,  doubtless  the 
son-in-law  of  the  Rev.  Jared  Eliot,  and  later  well  known  both 
as  a  physician  and  as  a  student  of  prophecy.  Nathaniel  John- 
son rode  to  Newport  on  Captain  Stone's  horse,  probably  armed 
with  a  letter  from  his  Stratford  brother  to  the  Rev.  Mr.  Honey- 
man,  then  near  the  close  of  his  useful  rectorship  of  almost  half 
a  century  at  Trinity  Church,  and  Newport  gave  ^113  out  of 
about  ^200  obtained  elsewhere  than  in  Guilford.  It  is  said  that 
nearly  a  thousand  pounds  were  expended  at  this  period,  without 
fully  completing  the  church,3  and  of  this  amount  between  seven 
and  eight  hundred  pounds  must  have  been  raised  at  home,. 
chiefly  within,  perhaps,  a  dozen  families.  It  must,  however,, 
be  remembered  that  the  sum  is  reckoned  not  in  pounds  sterling, 
but  in  the  greatly  depreciated  paper  of  the  colony,  which  may 
then  have  been  worth  one-fifth  of  its  face  value. '  Speaking 


Smith  MS. 


1  Rec.of  Christ    Ch,  ;  Talcott's    Guilford   Genealogy;  Manual  of  First  Church,  p.  19;: 
itk  MS. 

2  Guilf.  Geneal.;  Talcott's  Chittenden  Family,  p.  26;  Christ  Ch.  Rec. 

3  ^"984  i8s  6d.     Smith  MS. 

4  Bronson's    "Connecticut  Currency,"  pp.  24,  52,  65,. 74;  in  New  ffa^eii   Colony,  His- 
torical Society  Papers,  vol.  i. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn. 


35 


loosely,  we  may  say  that  the  parish  and  its  friends  in  Guilford 
gave  upwards  of  seven  hundred  dollars,  in  the  course  of  three  or 
four  years,  towards  so  far  building  the  church  that  it  could  be 
occupied  by  people  who  cared  less  about  their  comfort  than  we 
do.  But  this  sum  was  in  reality  a  very  much  larger  one  than 
it  seems  at  first  sight.  When  the  price  of  ordinary  labor  was 
less  than  fifty  cents  a  day,  and  one  poor  man  gave  the  equiva- 
lent of  three  dollars,  or  more  than  the  value  of  a  week's  work, 
we  can  feel  that  the  founders  of  the  parish,  some  of  whom, 
doubtless,  gave  much  more  largely  in  proportion  to  their  ability, 


FROM  A  SKKTCH  MADE  IN  1830  BY  ANGELINE  CLARK  BASSETT  (NOW  MRS.  DANIEL  M. 
PRENTICE),  THEN  TEN  YEARS  OLD. 

were  capable  of  making  sacrifices  for  their  religious  convictions. 
The  early  Episcopalians  of  Connecticut  were  sometimes  accused 
of  conforming  because,  by  the  help  of  the  Society  for  the  Propa- 
gation of  the  Gospel,  they  could  get  their  ministers  for  nothing. 
In  fact,  the  law  compelled  them  to  pay  their  ministers'  rates  ex- 
actly as  before,  and  if  the  missionaries,  making  a  shift  to  live 
on  stipends  generally  smaller  than  those  of  the  Congregational 
pastors,  frequently  chose,  as  they  did,  to  apply  the  rates  to  the 
building  of  churches,  the  payment  of  lay-readers  and  the  like, 
this  only  shows  that  ministers  and  people  could  both  make  sac- 
rifices. And  in  Guilford.  the  help  received  from  the  Society, 


36  Early  History  of 

though  of  real  value,  was  far  less  than  was  received  elsewhere. 
It  never  became  a  distinct  mission,  and  the  chief  burden  always 
rested  on  its  own  people.  Of  course,  I  cannot  answer  for  all 
the  motives  of  all  the  early  members  of  this  church,  but  I  am 
certain  that,  for  the  most  part,  they  were  such  as  their  descend- 
ants and  representatives  have  no  cause  to  be  ashamed  of. 

The  church  was  of  wood,  in  dimensions  thirty-two  feet  by 
forty,1  though  the  accounts  vary  a  little.  It  stood  east  of  the 
middle  of  the  Green,  facing  west,  nearly  in  front  of  this  church, 
on  the  rising  ground,  which  was  then  somewhat  higher  than 
now.  Its  Anglican  character  was  faintly  indicated  by  the 
arched  windows,  and  by  the  semi-circular  chancel  which  pro- 
jected from  the  east  end.  There  was  110  pulpit  for  nearly 
twenty  years  after  it  was  occupied,  and  when  it  was  first  used 
the  windows  were  only  partially  glazed.  The  original  seats 
were  probably  mere  benches  ;  square  pews  were  built  against 
the  north  and  south  walls,  by  individuals,  in  1769  and  after- 
wards. A  little  grove  of  poplars  was  planted  beside  it,  and  be- 
neath their  scanty  shade  the  fathers  of  the  parish  one  by 
one  lay  down  to  rest.  At  the  close  of  our  first  period,  however, 
in  the  spring  of  1750,  the  building  itself  had  probably  not  been 
used  at  all,  and  the  congregation  must,  during  the  greater  part 
of  diose  six  years,  have  assembled  in  private  houses.  More 
than  one  house  thus  doing  duty  as  an  Episcopal  church  may  be 
in  existence  to-day,  among  them  the  fourth  dwelling-house 
north  of  the  foundry  in  Fair  street,  built,  I  suppose,  by  Nathan- 
iel Johnson  in  1746.  Here,  during  the  four  or  five  years  follow- 
ing, we  may  reasonably  believe  that  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  often 
preached  and  administered  the  sacraments.  Assuming  this,  no 
building  now  remains  in  Guilford  which  has  a  stronger  claim 
upon  us  for  reverent  interest. 

The  second  period  of  our  history  covers  about  fourteen 
years,  from  1750  to  1764,  and  is  defined  by  the  rather  infrequent 
ministrations  of  a  clergyman  who  was,  nevertheless,  in  some 
sense  the  minister  of  the  parish  until  almost  the  close  of  the 
period.  This  was  the  Rev.  Ebenezer  Punderson  of  North  Gro- 
ton  (now  L,edyard),  who  had,  for  about  sixteen  years,  held  an 


i  Draft  of  letter  dated  1752,  in  parish  archives. 


Christ  C /lurch  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  37 

appointment  from  the  Venerable  Society  as  an  itinerant  mission- 
ary. Early  in  1750  he  took  Guilford,  with  other  places  in  this 
neighborhood,  under  his  care.1  He  had,  what  Mr.  Lyons  had 
lacked,  a  formal  commission  for  Guilford,  and  this  gave  him,  as 
he  doubtless  believed,  a  title  before  the  law  to  the  rates  levied 
on  resident  Episcopalians  for  the  support  of  public  worship,  al- 
though the  local  officials  might  not  agree  with  him  in  his  inter- 
pretation of  the  law.  By  an  act  passed  in  1727  the  collectors  of 
rates  were  required  to  pay  what  was  received  from  avowed  con- 
formists to  any  "person  in  orders,  according  to  ye  Canons  of  ye 
Church  of  England,  settled  and  abiding  among  them,  and  per- 
forming divine  service  so  near  to  any  person  yt  hath  declared 
himself  of  the  Church  of  England  that  he  can  conveniently  and 
doth  attend  the  publick  worship  there."  In  such  cases  taxes 
for  building  meeting-houses  were  not  to  be  collected,  and  an 
organized  society  of  Episcopalians  might  levy  additional  taxes 
for  its  own  uses,  if  necessary.2  The  description  of  those  thus 
exempted  from  the  obligation  of  supporting  Congregational 
worship  was  rather  vague,  and  might  be,  as  it  was,  interpreted 
very  different!}'  by  different  collectors  and  magistrates.  In  1728. 
when  the  only  missionaries  in  Connecticut  were  in  Fairfield 
county,  namely,  Samuel  Johnson  and  his  young  friend,  Henry 
Caner  of  the  town  of  Fairfield,  the  latter  tells  us  that  none  were 
regarded  as  living  "near"  an  Episcopal  church  unless  they 
lived  "within  a  mile  or  two."  Episcopalians  thought  them- 
selves wronged  by  a  rule  which,  if  applied  to  Coiigregationalists, 
would  have  deprived  every  Congregational  minister  of  a  consid- 
erable part  of  his  salary,  and  some  of  them  exposed  themselves 
to  imprisonment  by  refusing  to  pay  the  ministers'  rates.  And 
when  Mr.  Caner  proposed  that  he  be  appointed  missionary  for 
the  whole  territory  west  of  Fairfield,  changing  his  residence 
from  time  to  time,  the  Society  obtained  a  legal  opinion  to  the 
effect  that  an  appointment  "to  two  or  three  places"  would  not 
release  conformists  from  payments  to  the  local  ministers.3  But 
a  more  liberal  interpretation  slowly  gained  ground  among  Con- 


1  Christ  Ch.  Recs.;  Abstracts  of  S.  P.  G.;  Digest  of  Kec.  of  S.  P.  G.,  46.  854  ;  Beardsley's 
Hist,  of  Ch.  in  Conn.,  i.  166. 

2  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  i.  282-3;  Connecticut  Colonial  Records,  vii.  107. 

3  Conn.  Ch.  Docs..  \.  133-5,  235.  253-4.  278-9.  etc.;  Beardsley,  Hist,  of  Ch.  in   Conn..  71,  73- 
4,  129,  etc. 


3 8  Early  History  of 

gregationalists,  and  in  1736  Mr.  Punderson  himself  had  secured 
from  Governor  Talcott  a  recognition  of  his  right  to  the  rates  of 
conformists  living  in  a  neighboring  town,  in  terms  which 
implied,  what  the  laws  in  existence  assumed,  that  citizens  of 
Connecticut  had  a  right  to  select  the  Christian  ministry  and 
worship  which  they  should  support,  provided  these  were  made 
even  moderately  accessible.  Governor  Talcott  not  unnaturally 
advised  conformists  not  to  refuse  the  payment  of  rates  when 
demanded  in  due  form,  but  practically  recommended  payment 
under  protest,  with  resort  to  the  county  court  for  redress.1  Mr. 
Punderson,  it  would  seem,  had  not  always  found  this  course 
successful,''  but  in  the  majority  of  cases,  and  in  the  case  of  Guil- 
ford,  it  was  not  necessary  for  him  to  adopt  it,  his  claim  being 
promptly  acknowledged  by  the  collectors.3  The  First  Society 
might  well  have  grown  heartily  tired,  in  its  long  and  fruitless 
struggle  with  those  who  formed  the  Fourth  Society,  of  attempts 
to  control  separatists  by  the  help  of  the  civil  law.  It  is  quite 
true  that  whatever  friendly  regard  for  the  Church  of  England 
had  existed  among  the '  colonists  gave  place  to  strong  dislike 
when  that  church  began  to  rear  its  altars  in  Connecticut  and  to 
gather  around  them  bands  of  worshippers  recruited  from  the 
families  of  Congregational  ministers  and  deacons.  But  as  a  rule 
the  First  Society  exercised  much  forbearance  towards  the  }-oung 
parish  of  Christ  Church,  and  probably  saved  many  of  its  own 
members  thereby.  This  is  more  noteworthy  because  of  what 
was  taking  place  in  North  Guilford,  where  the  Third  Society 
(as  it  was  then  styled)  was  repeating  the  experiment  of  coercion 
with  the  usual  results.  The  death  of  Samuel  Russell  in  1746 
had  been  followed  by  a  struggle  over  the  succession  much  like 
the  one  which  began  eighteen  years  earlier  in  Guilford,  except 
that  the  seceding  party  became  Episcopalians.  Here  Mr.  Pun- 
derson's  claim  to  the  rates  was  vigorously  resisted,  and  the  col- 
lectors, trying  to  gather  them  for  Mr.  Russell's  son-in-law,  Mr. 


1  Talcott  Papets,  ii.  9-13,  forming   vol.  v.   of   Connecticut  Historical  Society   Collections, 
from  advance  sheets. 

2  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  i.  257-8. 

3  Conn.  Cli .  Docs.,  i.  262 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  39 

Richards,  lost  "much  blood,"  though    not,  presumably,    from 
blows  that  had  reached  any  vital  organ.1 

As  Mr.  Puiiderson  lived  more  than  thirty  miles  away,  and 
his  missionary  journeys  extended  beyond  the  limits  of  Connecti- 
cut, his  oversight  of  the  parish  was  at  first  extremely  limited. 
He  officiated  here  in  May,  1750,  and  in  the  September  following 
he  preached  in  the  church,  "to  abundance,"  on  a  week-day.2 
This  is  the  first  use  of  the  building  of  which  I  find  a  record,  and 
the  walls  then  only  consisted  of  beams  and  clapboards,  while 
windows  had  hardly  been  thought  of.3  It  was  not  until  the 
thirteenth  of  March,  1751,  that  the  church  was  formally  opened 
with  a  sermon  by  Dr.  Johnson,  from  the  words,  "O  worship  the 
Lord  in  the  beauty  of  holiness"  (Psalms  xcvi.  9).  At  that 
date,  moreover,  it  was  voted  to  use  the  church  regularly  on  Sun- 
days and  holy  days,  and  it  was  declared  that  its  name  was 
1 '  Christ's  Church, ' '  which  was  also  announced  as  the  name  of  the 
parish.  Another  vote  appropriated  the  rates,  if  Mr.  Punderson 
should  consent,  to  putting  in  glass.  This  shows  how  mission- 
ary stipends  might  help  even  a  parish  which  enjoyed  only  a 
small  fraction  of  a  missionary's  services.  It  also  shows  that  the 
Guilford  collectors  put  a  generous  construction  on  the  law.  It 
would  have  been  extremely  easy  to  plead  that  their  conforming 
neighbors  were  not  getting  as  much  religious  instruction,  even 
of  the  kind  which  they  preferred,  as  the  commonwealth  of  Con- 
necticut intended  they  should  get,  and  on  that  ground  to  have 
turned  the  rates  over  to  Mr.  Ruggles,  whom  they  could  hear 
every  Sunday.  It  would  have  been  rather  hard  to  meet  this 
plea,  for  the  conformists  were  not  satisfied  themselves  with  the 
attention  which  Mr.  Punderson  was  able  to  bestow  upon  them. 
In  the  autumn  of  1751  they  determined,  by  his  advice,  to  unite 
with  North  Guilford  and  Branford  in  obtaining  the  services  of  a 
candidate  for  orders  for  the  winter.  A  little  later,  in  December, 
1751,  and  January,  1752,  the  three  parishes,  strengthened  by 
the  accession  of  the  younger  congregation  at  New  Haven,  and 


1  Contribut.  to  Eccles.  Hist,  of  Conn.,  453;  Rec.  of  Third  Soc.,   May,  1751,  quoted  in 
Smith's  MS.;  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  i.  262-3,  28°-  290-1.     The  name  "Cohassett,"  often  occurriiiff 
in  the  work  last  cited,  should  be  read  "Cohabit,"  the  old  name  of  North  Guilford. 

2  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  i.  263,  271-2. 

3  Christ  Ch.  Rec. 


40  Early  History  of 

guided  by  Dr.  Johnson,  formally  constituted  themselves  a  mis- 
sion. In  August,  1752,  they  invited  the  Rev.  Solomon  Palmer 
of  Cornwall,  a  native  of  Branford,  to  be  their  missionary.  Mr. 
Palmer's  brother  and  Nathaniel  Johnson  of  Guilford  were  sent 
to  notify  the  new  missionary  of  his  election.  As  he  was  then, 
and  continued  to  be  for  more  than  a  year  longer,  the  Congrega- 
tional pastor  at  Cornwall,  one  imagines  that  the  situation  created 
by  the  appearance  of  the  Anglican  embassy  might  have  been  a 
rather  embarrassing  one.  It  seems  that  Mr.  Palmer's  inclina- 
tion to  enter  the  Church  of  England,  though  known  to  his 
friends  at  Branford,  had  not  yet  become  a  purpose,  and  that  the 
invitation  was  premature.  And  when  his  adhesion  to  episcopacy 
was  made  known  to  his  Cornwall  parishioners  in  March,  1754, 
it  surprised  them  very  much.1 

In  the  meantime  efforts  were  made  to  finish  the  church 
building,  still  only  partly  glazed.  In  October,  1752,  the  ward- 
ens, who  were  then  Edmund  Ward  and  Nathaniel  Johnson, 
under  the  advice  of  the  latter's  brother,  wrote  letters  to  two 
clergymen  in  the  distant  province  of  South  Carolina,  asking  for 
assistance.  One  of  them  was  the  Rev.  Jonathan  Copp,  a  Con- 
necticut man,  who  had  lately  visited  Guilford,  and  may  have 
encouraged  the  appeal.  The  other  was,  beyond  question,  the 
Rev.  Alexander  Garden  of  Charleston,  commissary  of  the  Bishop 
of  London  for  that  portion  of  the  colonies,  with  oversight  of  the 
clergy.  In  that  character  the  evangelist  Whitfield,  who  had 
previously  pronounced  him,  very  truthfully,  "  a  good  soldier  of 
Jesus  Christ,"  had  a  taste  of  his  righting  qualities,  and  the  Guil- 
ford wardens  allude  sympathetically  to  the  commissary's  bearing 
in  the  conflict.  They  state  that  the  parish  then  contained  but 
twelve  families,  precisely  the  number  of  rate-payers  in  1750.  It 
is  clear  that  the  growth  of  the  congregation  was  extremely  slow, 
if  indeed  it  was  then  growing  at  all.  The  wardens  also  state 
that  some  of  their  North  Guilford  brethren,  who  would  have 
helped  them,  were,  or  had  been,  in  jail  for  the  non-payment  of 
the  minister's  rates.  Nothing  seems  to  have  come  of  these 
letters  (drafts  of  which,  probably  in  Mr.  Ward's  handwriting, 


i  Christ  Ch.  Rec.;  Bailey's  Trinity  Ch.,  7-9;  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  128;  Gold's  Historv  of 
Cornwall,  49-51. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Gin/ford,   Conn.  41 

are  among  our  parish  documents),  and    it   is  even  possible  that 
they  were  never  sent.1 

In  the  summer  of  1753  this  parish  attained  the  object  which 
had  been  striven  for  a  year  or  two  before.  It  was  combined  in  a 
mission  with  New  Haven  and  Branford,  and,  as  I  infer,  with 
North  Guilford  also,  by  the  act  of  the  Venerable  Society.  The 
missionary  appointed  was  the  man  who  had  been  serving  them 
under  a  less  definite  commission,  and  who  now  removed  to  New 
Haven.  In  leaving  his  old  post  Mr.  Punderson  exchanged  a 
stipend  of  ^70  sterling  from  the  Society,  for  one  of  ^50.  But 
thirteen  persons  in  Guilford  subscribed  between  six  and  seven 
pounds  sterling  towards  his  support,  and  if  the  other  parishes 
gave  as  much  in  proportion,  this  difference  was  more  than  made 
good.2  The  limitation  of  Mr.  Punderson's  territory  to  three 
adjoining  towns  (or  townships)  may  have  helped  to  terminate 
the  struggle  at  North  Guilford.  An  attempt  had  been  made 
there  in  1752  to  save  the  rates  of  conformists  by  employing  a 
young  clergyman  living  at  Middletown,  Mr.  Camp,  who  officia- 
ted "  steadily  "  among  them.  It  failed  because  Mr.  Camp  was 
not  yet  in  the  service  of  the  Venerable  Society,  and  had  not 
' '  any  place  in  particular  assigned  to  him  in  his  license  ' '  (from 
the  Bishop  of  London).3  But  in  September,  1753,  the  conform- 
ists were  granted  land  on  which  to  build  their  church,4  which 
makes  it  probable  that  Mr.  Punderson's  claim,  in  virtue  of  his 
appointment  to  the  newly  established  mission,  was  felt  to  be  too 
strong  to  be  resisted,  or,  perhaps,  that  the  lesson  of  toleration 
had  at  last  been  learned.  How  well  it  had  been  learned  in  the 
First  Society,  is  pleasantly  shown  by  the  fact  that  at  the  close  of 
the  next  year  (December  4,  1754,)  that  society  "Voted,  That 
the  conformists  to  the  Church  of  England  shall  have  Liberty  to 
have  the  Bell  rung  upon  their  feast  &  fast  days  or  other  Holli- 
days  when  it  doth  not  interfere  with  any  of  the  days  for  public 
worship  of  the  ith  Society  during  the  pleasure  of  sd  Society. 
They  paying  the  Bellman.5 


1  Christ  Ch.  Rec.;  Dalcho's   Church  of  South  Carolina,  128-46,  163-74,  176-8,  361 ;  Tver- 
man's  Life  of  George  Whitefield,  \.  142,  361-3,  395-401. 

2  Christ  Ch.  Rer.;  Abst.  of  S.  P.  G.  for  1762;  Lett,  of  S.  P.  G.  (Harwood  MS.),  vol.  B. 
23  (294);  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  21. 

3  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  i.  298-9. 

4  Smith  MS. 

5  Ibid. 


42  Early  History  of 

Mr.  Punderson  was  a  generous  man,  and  a  diligent  and  suc- 
cessful missionary,  as  he  had  been  a  useful  and  honored  Congre- 
gational minister,  though  Dr.  Johnson  thought  him  not  well 
adapted  to  New  Haven,  now  the  principal  scene  of  his  labors.1 
He  remained  in  charge  of  the  new  mission  for  about  ten  years, 
or  until  1763,  but  for  that  period  the  records  of  this  parish  almost 
fail  us,  while  Mr.  Punderson's  own  manuscripts,  which  might 
have  thrown  light  on  this  period,  were  lost  by  shipwreck  after 
his  death.2  A  printed  letter  of  the  wardens  for  the  year  1768 
(of  which  I  have  made  much  use),  informs  tis,  however,  that 
Guilford  gained  less  than  it  hoped  for  from  the  arrangement. 
Mr.  Punderson's  work  in  the  neighborhood  of  New  Haven  grew 
on  his  hands,  even  if  the  church  in  that  town  did  not  thrive. 
Six,  if  not  seven,  congregations  were  under  his  care  within  the 
three  townships  assigned  to  him,  and  this  congregation,  which 
had  expected  to  see  him  once  a  month,  at  last  did  not  see  him 
at  all.3  The  desire  naturally  arose  to  become  part  of  a  less 
extensive  mission,  and  with  it  at  least  the  hope  that  Guilford 
might  be  the  seat  of.  the  mission.  But  to  this  end  the  Society's 
demand  of  a  house  and  a  glebe,  or  tract  of  land,  however  small, 
for  the  missionary's  use,  must  be  met.  Great  efforts  were  there- 
fore made  to  secure  money  for  the  purchase  of  a  glebe,  and  the 
statement  of  the  wardens,  in  1768,  that  they  "had  obtained 
everything"  which  they  had  "struggled  for,  except  the  Soci- 
ety's patronage,"  almost  seems  to  imply  that  their  efforts  had 
been  successful.  Our  defective  records  give  us  no  information 
about  this  matter,  but  it  would  appear  that  the  requisite  amount 
could  not  be  collected  at  home.  Accordingly,  as  I  suppose  in 
1763,  the  parish  appealed  for  help  to  Mr.  St.  George  Talbot,  of 
the  province  of  New  York,  who  had  shown  much  interest  in  the 
progress  of  the  Church  of  England  in  Connecticut,  and  who  did 
assist  other  parishes  very  liberally.  He  was  understood  to 
promise  the  sum  of  ,£200,  and  is  said  to  have  left  a  blank  space 


i  Beardsley,  Hist,  of  Cli.  in  Conn.,  {.91-2,  166,  etc.  ;  Conn.  Cli.  Docs.,  i.  311 ;  ii.  21,  39-40, 
42,  etc. 

2  Letter  from  Rev.  X.  A.  Welton  of  Poquetanuck. 

3  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  128;  Dig. of  S.  P.  G.  Rec..  854  ;  Abst.  of  S.  P.  G.  for  1763  ;  Lett.  <>/ 
S.  P.  G.  (Harwood  MS.)  vol.  B.,  23  (293).  The  seven  congregations,  never  all  named  to- 
gether, were  those  of  New  Haven,  West  Haven,  North  Haven,  Branford,  Northford. 
Guilford  and  North  Gnilford. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  43 

in  his  will  for  a  bequest  to  the  parish  of  that  amount.  He  died 
about  five  years  later  without  filling  the  blank,  and  though  it 
was  hoped  for  a  while  that  the  Venerable  Society,  to  which  he 
must  have  made  a  considerable  bequest,  would  devote  part  of  it 
to  Guilford,  all  such  hopes  were  disappointed,  and  Guilford  had 
to  take  care  of  itself.  And  as  we  have  explicit  testimony  to  the 
effect  that  Mr.  Talbot's  anticipated  gift  was  to  be  used  in  buy- 
ing a  glebe,  while  the  wardens  do  not  say  in  so  many  words  that 
a  glebe  was  bought,  and  as  I  have  found  no  evidence  of  such  a 
purchase  either  in  church  or  town  records^  it  is  nearly  certain 
that  the  parish  continued  to  lack,  as  it  still  lacks,  this  important 
part  of  its  endowment,  and  that  it  was  for  this  reason  that  it 
could  not  obtain  "  the  Society's  patronage"  in  the  form  of  a 
stipend  for  a  resident  minister.1 

Of  course  the  services  must  have  been  conducted  by  lay- 
readers  during  the  long  intervals  between  Mr.  Punderson's 
visits.  And  in  1759,  when  those  visits  were  becoming  still  less 
frequent,  a  j~oung  man  of  twenty,  already  well  qualified  for  this 
duty,  took  his  place  in  the  congregation.  This  was  Nathaniel 
Johnson's  stepson,  Bela  Hubbard,  whose  mother  had  become 
the  second  wife  of  Captain  Johnson  in  1755.  Mr.  Hubbard  had 
graduated  in  New  Haven  in  1758,  and  had  pursued  his  studies 
for  a  year  under  the  direction  of  Dr.  Johnson,  lately  made  first 
president  of  King's  College  (now  Columbia),  in  New  York. 
He  designed  to  take  orders,  but  was  too  young  to  be  ordained, 
and  no  doubt  continued  to  study  at  home.  Dr.  Johnson  recom- 
mended him  to  the  parish  as  a  lay- reader,  and  he  probably  began 
to  act  as  such  under  the  nominal  incumbent,  Mr.  Punderson,  at 
least  as  early  as  1760.  At  the  beginning  of  1761  he  was  formally 
chosen -reader  by  the  two  Guilford  parishes,  and  held  the  posi- 
tion until  he  reached  the  age  of  twenty-four,  required  by  the 
canons  for  taking  priest's  orders.  As  he  became  twenty-four  in 
August,  1763,  and  sailed  for  England  a  little  later,  his  term  of 
service  lasted  more  than  two  years  and  a  half.L>  At  this  date 
Mr.  Punderson  had  already  been  transferred  from  the  New 


t  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  26-7.  55-6,  121.  123-4,  127-8;  Lett,  of  S.  P.  G.  (Harwood  MS.1),  vol.  B. 
23  (2);  Beardsfey,  Hist,  of  Ch.  in  Conn.,  i.  212-3,  238. 

2  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  128;  Records  of  St.  John's  Ch.,  North  Guilford  ;  Talcott's  Guilf. 
Gen.;  Sprague's  Annals,  v.  234. 


44  Early  History  of 

Haven  mission  to  Rye,  and  had  been  succeeded,  in  the  summer 
of  1763,  by  the  Rev.  Solomon  Palmer,  whose  services  Guilford 
had  tried  to  secure  twelve  years  before.  As  Guilford  and  Bran- 
ford  still  formed  part  of  the  mission,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  the 
former  town  was  visited  by  Mr.  Palmer,  as  the  latter  is  said  to 
have  been.  His  incumbency  at  Guilford  must,  however,  have 
been  even  more  purely  nominal  than  that  of  Mr.  Punderson. 
Mr.  Hubbard,  nevertheless,  may  have  acted,  technically,  under 
Mr.  Palmer's  direction  for  a  few  months.  But  New  Haven  now 
desired  to  be  made  a  distinct  mission,  while  Branford,  which 
Dr.  Johnson  would  have  had  combined  with  Guilford  and  "their 
villages,  Cohabit  and  Pauge  "  (North  Guilford  and  Northford), 
not  long  after  aspired  to  entire  independence,  although  it  had  no 
church  building.  At  all  events  Guilford  and  North  Guilford, 
acting  apart  from  Branford,  but  apparently  with  the  expectation 
of  help  from  Killingworth,  invited  Bela  Hubbard  to  become 
their  minister.  They  pledged  ,£30  sterling  towards  his  support, 
which  provided  him  with  the  ' '  title  for  orders ' '  demanded  by 
the  canon,  that  is,  the  assurance  that  there  was  "some  certain 
Place  where  he  might  use  his  Function."  The  Society,  it  was 
hoped,  would  erect  these  congregations  into  a  mission,  with  suf- 
ficient additional  salary  to  enable  the  missionary  to  live  in  com- 
fort. In  the  meantime  provision  had  had  to  be  made  here,  per- 
haps by  Mr.  Hubbard  and  his  relatives,  for  the  expenses  of  his 
journey,  not  far  from  ,£100  sterling.  This  was  the  posture  of 
affairs  at  the  close  of  our  second  period,  early  in  I764.1 

The  parish  had  evidently  made  some  progress,  little  as  Mr, 
Punderson  had  been  able  to  do  for  it.  The  unquenchable  zeal 
of  the  laity  was  of  more  service  than  the  infrequent  clerical  min- 
istrations which  were  obtainable.  In  October,  1763,  Dr.  John- 
son wrote  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  that  there  were  fifty 
families  and  as  many  communicants  in  Guilford.  This  enumer- 
ation is  doubtless  an  estimate,  and  it  must  include  members  of 
both  the  parishes  in  the  town.  The  same  writer,  perhaps  a  very 
little  later,  informed  the  Society  that  there  were  "  30  or  40  fam- 
lies  "  in  both.2  It  is,  moreover,  probable  that  at  that  time  the 


1  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  37-8,  39-45,  49-5:,  103,  128;  Absts.  of  S.  P.  G..  1764;  Hist,  of  Ch.  in 
Conn.,  i.  209-10;  Bailey's  Trinity  Ch.,  9,  53. 

2  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  54  ;  Absts.  of  S.  P.  G.,  1764. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  45 

North  Guilford  parish,  formed  by  the  secession  at  one  time  of  a 
considerable  minority  from  the  Congregational  Church,  was 
larger  than  ours.  As  lately  as  1810  it  must  have  contained  sev- 
eral more  communicants,  though  fewer  families.1  But  assuming 
that  there  were  only  fifteen  or  twenty  families  in  Christ  Church 
in  1763,  leaving  twenty-five  or  thirty  for  St.  John's,  North  Guil- 
ford, there  had  still  been  an  advance  since  1752,  when  there 
were  only  twelve.  The  scanty  local  records  of  the  period  furnish 
only  two  new  family  names  which  seem  to  belong  to  Guilford, 
those  of  Stone  and  Benton,  though- new  Christian  names  are 
much  more  numerous.  The  name  of  Hubbard  should  doubtless 
be  added,  and  there  must  have  been  others.  It  is  a  fact  too. 
interesting  to  be  passed  over  that  Joel  Stone,  the  infant  son  of 
Stephen,  baptized  here  by  Mr.  Punderson  in  1750,  is  commemo- 
rated to-day,  as  Colonel  Stone,  by  a  painted  church  window, 
containing  his  likeness  in  the  dignified  dress  of  a  century  ago^ 
on  the  north  bank  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  in  the  Canadian  town  of 
Ganonoque,  Ontario,  of  which  he  is  reverenced  as  the  founder.2 
And  it  is  worth  observing  that  the  migratory  impulse,  which  has 
cost  Guilford  so  much,  was  already  strong  in  the  last  century. 
It  has  wholly  removed  many  names  from  the  lists  of  this  parish, 
while  some  which  remain  are  borne  by  descendants  of  other 
branches  of  the  same  families.  The  old  Registry  Book  of  Christ 
Church,  Stratford,  supplies  two  individual  names  of  interest. 
One  is  that  of  the  venerable  Andrew  Ward,  father  of  Edmund 
Ward,  and  grandfather  of  Bela  Hubbard,  and  one  of  the  origi- 
nal members  of  the  Fourth  Church,  who  became  a  communicant 
in  the  Church  of  England  in  1750,  at  the  age  of  eighty.  The 
other  is  that  of  young  Theophilus  Morgan,  doubtless  a  nephew 
of  the  first  wife  of  Captain  Johnson,  and  a  resident  of  Killing- 
worth,  baptized  as  an  adult  in  1754.  Here  we  meet  one  of  the 
earlier  traces  of  attachment  to  the  Anglican  church  in  the  parish 
of  Jared  Eliot,  Samuel  Smithson's  son-in-law,  who  long  before 
was  himself  almost  persuaded  to  apply  for  episcopal  orders. 

Our  third  period  begins  with  the  return  of  Bela  Hubbard 
from  England  in  June,  1764,  and  covers  about  three  years.  Mr. 
Hubbard  came  home  a  priest  of  the  Church  of  England,  and 


i  Convention  Journal ',  1811  (reprint),  p.  65. 
Communicated  by  Mrs.  N.  A.  H.  Moore.     See  also  Can.  Reporter,  Dec.  15,  22,  1894. 


46  Early  History  of 

brought  with  him,  no  doubt,  a  license  to  officiate  from  the 
Bishop  of  lyondon,  whose  jurisdiction  embraced  the  colonial 
churches.  But  he  did  not  come  as  a  missionary  of  the  Society 
for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  and  Guilford  was  no  longer 
recognized  by  the  Society  as  even  a  part  of  one  of  its  missions. 
Dr.  Johnson  had  predicted  this  result,  while  he  had  pleaded  the 
cause  of  the  parish  in  a  letter  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
but  its  members  continued  to  hope  that  help  would  soon  be  given 
them.1  The  resources  of  the  Society  were  no  doubt  heavily 
taxed,  and  it  may  have  been  really  unable  at  that  time  to  erect 
a  new  mission.  But  had  those  whom  the  Society  represented 
been  as  eager  to  ' '  episcopize  ' '  New  England  as  they  were  sup- 
posed to  be,  the  resources  of  the  Societ}-  would  have  been  more 
abundant,  and  Guilford,  with  the  claim  established  by  its  long 
struggle,  and  supported  by  the  powerful  influence  of  Dr.  John- 
son, would  not  have  been  almost  wholly  neglected.  Our  parish 
is  an  important  witness  to  the  real  aims  of  the  Venerable  Society 
in  its  work  among  a  people  already  provided  with  such  Christian 
institutions  as  satisfied  most  of  them.  It  sought  simply  to  aid 
those,  desirous  of  conforming  to  the  Church  of  England,  who 
were  earnest  enough  and  numerous  enough  to  bear  a  large  part 
of  the  burden  themselves.  It  planted  its  New  England  missions 
where  the  soil  gave  the  fairest  promise  of  a  vigorous  growth  ; 
perhaps  not  a  bad  example  for  other  missionary  societies  in  sim- 
ilar circumstances,  though  its  rule  bore  hardly  upon  Guilford. 

Mr.  Hubbard,  therefore,  had  to  content  himself  with  the 
thirty  pounds  sterling  which  his  congregations  offered  him, 
increased  by  some  private  income  of  his  own.  In  those  days  a 
country  minister  might  perhaps  live  on  what  he  received,  but  he 
could  scarcely  support  a  family  on  it.  One  mark  of  the  Vener- 
able Society's  favor  he  probably  did  bring  back  with  him,  and 
it  remains  as  a  memorial  not  only  of  his  ministry  here,  but  of 
that  of  the  lay-ministers  who  served  under  him  and  after  him. 
This  is  the  folio  Prayer  Book,  used  here  to-night,  and  bearing 
abundant  marks  of  use  during  the  later  years  of  the  colonial 
period,  especially  in  those  parts  of  the  volume  which  a  layman 
could  read  publicly. 


I  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  53-4. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn. 


47 


Mr.  Hubbard's  services  were  for  a  while  required  at  North- 
ford,  and  he  did  work  as  an  itinerant  at  Branford,  New  Haven, 
Saybrook,  and  even  Litchfield.1  Of  the  three  congregations 
which  formed  his  permanent  cure  Killingworth  deserves  further 
mention.  This  name,  it  must  be  remembered,  belonged  then, 
and  for  many  years  afterwards,  to  what  is  now  Clinton,  the  pres- 
ent Killingworth  being  then  a  society,  or  parish,  in  the  same 
township,  but  known  as  North  Killingworth.  If  there  could  be 
any  doubt  as  to  the  identification  of  the  eastern  part  of  Mr.  Hub- 


BELA  HUBBARD,  D.  D. 


bard's  cure  with  Clinton  it  would  be  removed  by  hi  sown  descrip- 
tion of  the  place  as  "  a  seaport  Town  10  miles  distant."1  Jared 
Eliot,  the  Congregational  pastor  of  Killingworth,  who,  after 
openly  declaring  in  1722  his  doubts  about  the  validity  of  his 
ordination,  had  found  his  doubts  removed,  nevertheless  remained 
all  his  life  friendly  to  the  Church  of  England.3  He  died  in  the 
spring  of  1763,  and  before  Mr.  Hubbard's  departure  in  the 
autumn  it  seems  certain  that  a  number  of  families  at  Killing- 


1  Lett,  of  S.  /'.  (,'.  (Harwood  MS.),  vol.  B.  23  (166);  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.  M.  107. 

2  I^tt.  of  S.  P.  G..  as  in  last  note. 

3  Beardsley,  Hist,  of  Ch.  in  Conn.,\.  28-30. 


i 

48  Early  History  of 

worth  had  made  known  their  attachment  to  episcopacy,  while 
others  were  understood  to  be  ready  to  declare  themselves  con- 
formists.1 It  may  fairly  be  guessed,  though  I  find  no  authority 
for  affirming,  that  regard  for  Mr.  Eliot  had  prevented  any  earlier 
attempt  to  establish  a  congregation  of  conformists.  And  Mr. 
Hubbard's  language,  in  the  letter  to  the  Venerable  Society  just 
referred  to,  shows  that  at  least  as  respects  most  of  the  new  con- 
gregation, the  final  act  of  conformity  took  place  after  his  return 
from  England.  Between  thirty  and  forty  families,  he  tells  us, 
then  conformed.  Another  contemporary  authority  gives  the 
number  of  heads  of  families,  at  the  close  of  1766,  as  about  thirty- 
four.  This  congregation  must  have  been  the  largest  of  the 
three,  though  perhaps  the  weakest  financially,  in  spite  of  the 
presence  of  two  or  three  wealthy  and  influential  men.'  They 
were  apparently  not  strong  enough  to  build  a  church,  and  this 
placed  them  at  a  serious  disadvantage. 

Less  than  two  years  ago  (December  4,  1892,)  I  gave  an 
account  of  Dr.  Hubbard  in  this  place.  I  need  only  say  now 
that  he  was  a  man  of  extraordinary  sweetness  of  character,  while 
inflexible  in  his  devotion  to  duty  and  to  truth,  and  capable  of 
playing  a  hero's  part,  as  he  did  afterwards  at  New  Haven,  when 
in  the  face  of  the  pestilence  he  stood  firmly  at  his  post,  and  even 
added,  it  is  said,  the  duties  and  risks  of  a  nurse  to  those  of  a 
pastor.  His  preaching  undoubtedly  did  his  hearers  good,  and  he 
could  say  of  the  fathers  of  this  congregation  that  they  ' '  gener- 
ally adorn  the  Doctrine  of  our  Lord  and  Saviour,  by  sober,  exem- 
plary Lives."3  To  a  large  extent,  no  doubt,  they  came  from 
that  class  of  Congregationalists  which  used  to  ' '  own  the  cove- 
nant ' '  without  becoming  communicants.  They  came  because 
their  consciousness  of  religious  obligation  was  so  deep  that  they 
must  be  communicants  when  they  might.  And  the  letters  of 
ths  missionaries  make  it  clear  that  they  were  more  faithful  in 
this  respect  than  their  successors  are  now,  and  that  in  all  respects 
they  were  as  good  Christians  as  most  others  were  then.  It 
would  be  hard  to  find  a  better  example  of  one  fine  type  of  Chris- 
tian living  than  is  furnished  by  the  unselfish,  blameless,  patient, 


1  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  54.   Killingworth  is  not  named,  but  no  other  place  can  be  meant. 

2  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  105-7. 

3  Lett,  of  S.  P.  G.,  as  above  ;  cf.  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  106. 


Christ  Church  Parish,  Guilford,   Conn.  49 

beneficent  life  of  Bela  Hubbard,  and  what  he  was  his  people, 
who  dearly  loved  him,  must  in  their  various  degrees  have 
aspired  to  be. 

The  outward  growth  of  the  parish  seems  to  have  been  slight 
during  Mr.  Hubbard's  incumbency.  In  January,  1767,  a  few 
months  before  it  closed,  he  reported  upwards  of  eighty  families 
in  his  three  congregations.  As  we  must  assign  upwards  of  thirty 
families  to  Killingworth,  we  have  about  fifty  for  the  two 
Guilfords,  or  the  same  number  as  we  find  in  Dr.  Johnson's  letter 
of  October,  1763.  But  as  Johnson  gives  a  smaller  number  in  a 
nearly  contemporary  report,  having  been  furnished,  we  may 
infer,  only  with  estimates,  there  is  room  for  a  probable  assump- 
tion that  this  congregation  had  increased  a  little.  It  would  not 
have  been  strange,  however,  had  there  been  a  decided  decrease. 
A  powerful  influence,  unfriendly  to  growth,  came  into  operation 
here  and  elsewhere  during  Mr.  Hubbard's  pastorate.  The 
Stamp  Act  was  passed  in  1765,  in  violation  of  all  the  traditions 
of  English  liberty,  since  it  involved  the  taking  of  men's  money 
without  their  consent.  Opposition  to  it  was  almost  universal, 
far  more  so  than  the  determination  to  resist  other  unconstitu- 
tional exactions  by  force,  a  few  years  later.  The  old  lay-reader 
of  Guilford,  William  Samuel  Johnson,  was  perhaps  the  most 
important  member  of  the  Stamp  Act  Congress,  called  to  obtan. 
the  repeal  of  the  act,  and  even  his  father  thought  the  course  of 
Parliament  "  very  ill-judged."  But  Mr.  Hubbard,  with  others 
of  the  younger  clergy,  and  some  not  young,  regarded  it  as 
"  nothing  short  of  rebellion  .  .  .  to  avow  opposition,"  and 
their  people  generally  agreed  with  them.2  Such  an  attitude 
must  have  done  as  much  as  anything  could  have  done  to  check 
the  growth  of  the  church.  And  another  unfortunate  result  fol- 
lowed, which  was  an  additional  blow  to  the  hopes  of  the  Guil- 
ford Episcopalians.  This  was  the  determination  of  the  Society 
for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel,  adopted  in  1766,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  commotions  established  by  the  Stamp  Act,  to 
establish  no  more  missions  in  New  England.3  For  several  years 
complaints  against  the  Society  had  been  frequent  and  bitter, 

i  Autobiography,  (MS.)  sect.  54. 

•2.  Conn.  Cli.  Docs.,  ii.  81,  106-7,  etc. 

3  Ibid.,  it.  102-3;  Beardsley,  Hist,  of  Ch.  in  Conn.'  i.  102-3. 


5O  Early  History  of 

and  the  fear  lest  Bishops  should  be  sent  to  America,  to  be  sup- 
ported by  general  taxation  and  to  exercise  secular  authority  as 
at  home,  became  a  very  active  element  in  the  popular  discon- 
tent. The  fear,  though  not  warranted  by  the  attitude  of  sober- 
minded  Episcopalians,  was  neither  unnatural  nor  wholly  unrea- 
sonable, and  the  willingness  of  the  home  government  to  set  aside 
colonial  rights,  which  was  betrayed  in  the  Stamp  Act,  made  a 
farther  violation  of  rights  seem  more  probable.  Guilford  itself 
was  the  scene  of  a  most  important  step  in  the  struggle  against 
an  American  episcopate  when,  in  1766,  the  General  Association 
of  Connecticut  sat  here,  with  Thomas  Ruggles  as  its  moderator, 
and  received,  and  readily  responded  to,  proposals  from  the  Pres- 
byterian Synod  for  an  alliance  in  the  struggle.  Altogether,  the 
brief  period  of  Mr.  Hubbard's  ministry  abounded  in  evil  portents 
for  the  future  of  the  Church  of  England. 

Nevertheless  this  was  the  brightest  period  in  the  history  of 
the  parish  during  the  last  century,  as  it  was  the  only  one,  as  far 
as  I  can  learn,  when  it  had  a  resident  minister.  And  when,  in 
the  summer  of  1767,  acting  under  the  advice  of  his  clerical 
brethren,  Mr.  Hubbard  took  charge  of  the  mission  at  New 
Haven,  to  be  honored  and  loved  there  for  nearly  half  a  century, 
the  people  were  heart-broken.  His  removal  seems  to  have  been 
inevitable  if  he  wrere  to  have  a  home  of  his  own.  Dr.  Johnson 
testifies  that  the  people  could  not  "provide  a  tolerable  support 
for  Mr.  Hubbard,"  though  neither  could  "bear  part."  He 
long  hesitated,  and  even  at  one  time  felt  ' '  compelled  to  tarry 
among  them."1  As  his  marriage  took  place  in  less  than  a  year 
after  he  left  Guilford  (May  15,  1768),  it  is  probable  enough  that 
his  purpose  to  marry  finally  settled  the  question.2  There  is  a 
pathetic  letter  to  the  Society  from  the  churchwardens,  Nathaniel 
Johnson  and  Samuel  Collins,  written  in  July,  1768,  a  yeai  after 
Mr.  Hubbard's  removal,  of  which  I  have  made  much  use,  which 
vividly  portrays  the  sorrow  of  the  congregation.  The  loss,  say 
the  writers,  was  "  so  distressing  to  us,  that  words  cannot  express 
it.  .  .  .  Some  of  us  are  almost  ready  to  say  our  wound  is 
incurable.  .  .  .  The  removal  of  Mr.  Hubbard  has  given 
the  Church  the  heaviest  blow  that  ever  it  received."3 


1  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  103,  107. 

2  Talcott's  Guilf.  Geneal.;  Sprague,  Ann.  of  A  met:  Pulp.,  v. 

3  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  129. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  51 

The  new  family  names  appearing  in  the  records  during  these 
three  years,  and  which  I  can  do  no  more  than  mention,  are 
Bradley,  Ludinton,  Shelley,  Fairchild  and  Campbell.  It  will 
be  remembered  that  these  names  are  not  taken  from  lists  of 
parishioners,  which  do  not  exist  for  this  period,  but  are  given 
as  they  occur  for  various  reasons  in  the  records.  There  were 
probably  some  members  of  the  congregation  whose  names  do 
not  appear  at  all,  and  some  may  have  entered  it  long  before 
there  was  any  occasion,  such  as  the  baptism  of  a  child,  for 
recording  their  names. 

We  have  traversed  less  than  half  the  first  fifty  years  of  our 
parochial  life,  but  we  can  make  a  briefer  passage  through  the 
rest.  And  the  next  stage  shall  be  a  long  one,  of  seventeen 
years,  carrying  us  through  the  Revolution,  and  ending  in  1784. 
This  period,  the  fourth,  has  its  limit  defined  for  us  with  toler- 
able accuracy  by  the  continuance  of  Mr.  Hubbard's  pastoral 
oversight  in  such  measure  as  his  new  duties  permitted  him  to 
maintain  it.  This  parish,  however,  and  doubtless  the  whole 
cure  of  three  congregations,  naturally  desired  more  constant  ser- 
vices than  he  could  possibly  give,  and  made  an  effort  to  secure 
them.  And  the  leaders  of  our  congregation,  with  those  wrhom 
they  led,  never  appear  to  better  advantage  than  when  all  hearts 
were  still  aching  with  the  wound  inflicted  by  Mr.  Hubbard's 
removal.  The  veteran  churchwardens,  both  now  past  sixty, 
spoke  in  the  spirit  of  Thomas  Hooker  of  Hartford  when,  testify- 
ing for  the  "Congregational  way,"  he  declared  that  "Christ, 
the  King  of  his  Church  and  Master  of  his  House,  he  only  in 
reason,  can  make  laws  that  are  Authenticke  for  the  government 
thereof."1  To  these  Guilford  Episcopalians,  presumably  drawn 
towards  the  Church  of  England,  at  first,  by  their  desire  to  enjoy 
the  sacraments  on  Catholic  terms,  the  order  of  that  Church,  the 
historic  order  of  Christendom,  had  come  to  seem  that  which 
their  King  and  Master  had  established.  And  so  they  were 
"  assured,"  thej-  "  firmly  believed,"  that  theirs  was  "the  cause 
of  Christ;"  they  might  well,  with  the  same  Thomas  Hooker, 
have  regarded  church  government  as  ' '  a  fundamentall  point  of 
Religion."  In  the  strength  of  this  conviction,  much  stronger  in 
them  than  in  those  who  then  controlled  church  action  in  Eng- 

i  Survev  of  the  Stinnne  of  Church  Discipline,  Pt.  I.,  5. 


52  Early  History  of 

land,  and  hoping  against  hope,  they  appealed  once  more,  in 
1768,  to  the  Venerable  Society.  They  had  unanimously  invited 
John  Tyler  of  Wallingford,  a  candidate  who  had  been  serving 
among  them  as  lay-reader,  "to  go  home  for  orders,"  and  he 
had  consented  to  come  back  to  Guilford  if  the  Society  would 
grant  only  a  small  addition  to  the  salary  which  could  be  given 
by  the  people  of  his  cure.  Before  the  letter  was  written  Mr. 
Tyler  had  received  priest's  orders,  and  then  the  Society  sent 
him  to  Norwich.1 

But  Mr.  Hubbard  had  stipulated  with  his  New  Haven  flock 
that  he  should  visit  his  old  parishioners  four  times  a  year,'1  and 
he  was  their  minister  in  as  real  a  sense  as  Mr.  Punderson  had 
been.  Our  records  show  that  he  was  often  here  on  Sunday,  and 
we  may  fairly  suppose  that  he  went  sometimes  to  North  Guil- 
ford and  Killingworth.  He  gave  the  Holy  Communion  to  the 
people,  he  baptized  their  children,  he  married  their  young  peo- 
ple, he  buried  their  dead.  He  was  even  recognized  by  the  civil 
authorities  as  the  incumbent  of  the  parish  ;  rates  were  paid  to 
him  in  1770  and  1776  ;  in  1780  he  presided  at  a  parish  meeting. 
His  ministrations  did  not  wholty  cease  until  near  the  close  of  the 
century,3  if  they  ceased  then,  but  during  the  present  period  cl 
seventeen  years,  it  does  not  appear  that  this  parish  secured,  or, 
after  the  failure  of  Mr.  Tyler's  case,  attempted  to  secure,  any 
other  minister  than  Bela  Hubbard.  His,  however,  were  not  the 
only  clerical  sendees  which  were  rendered  here.  Seven  of  the 
Connecticut  clergy  besides  Mr.  Hubbard  are  recorded  at  least 
once  as  visiting  Guilford,  often  on  a  Sunday.  Among  them 
were  Abraham  Jarvis,  afterwards  our  second  Bishop,  Jeremiah 
Learning,  the  first  choice  of  the  clergy  for  our  first  Bishop,  and 
Roger  Viets,  uncle  and  early  instructor  of  Bishop  Griswold  of 
the  Eastern  Diocese.  But  I  may  be  pardoned  for  speaking  with 
pleasure  of  the  fact  that  the  first  clerical  name  thus  introduced 
into  our  records,  and  the  name  which  occurs  oftenest,  is  that  of 
Samuel  Andrews,  the  missionary  at  Wallingford.  He  had 
promised  a  yearly  visit  on  a  Sunday  or  a  Holy  Day,1  and  he 
evidently  kept  his  promise  until  his  loyalist  sympathies,  as  tradi- 

1  Conn.  Cli.  Docs.,  ii.  129  :  Life  and    Corresp.  of  Samuel  Johnson,  333-4  :    Hint,  of  Ch .  hi 
Con n.,  \.  270. 

2  Lett,  of  S.  P.  (,'.  (Harwood  MS.),  vol.  B.,  23  (168). 

3  Dr.  Hubbard's   .\otftia   Parochialis,  at  New  Haven,  contains   the   record  of   many 
official  acts  performed  here,  as  well  as  elsewhere  out  of  New  Haven. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn. 


53 


tion  says,  limited  his  journeys  to  his  own  premises,  except  by 
written  permission  of  the  Wallingford  selectmen.  Among  the 
children  baptized  by  him  was  Roxana,  daughter  of  Eli  Foote, 
who  became  the  wife  of  the  famous  layman  Beecher,  and  the 
mother  of  children  still  more  famous.  I  venture  to  think  of 
this  kinsman  of  mine  as  for  about  seven  years  Mr.  Hubbard's 
chief  assistant  in  the  care  of  Christ  Church,  Guilford. 


CHRIST  CHURCH,  GUILFORD,  CONSECRATED  DEC.  12,  1838. 

Loyalist  sympathies  undoubtedly  prevailed  in  this  congre- 
gation, to  its  detriment,  when  the  war  broke  out,  although  Guil- 
ford Episcopalians  and  their  sons  were  found  among  the  patriot 
soldiers.  And  I  imagine  that  we  should  obtain  a  nearly  com- 
plete list  of  the  men  of  the  parish  if  we  could  find  an  enrollment 
made  by  the  town's  order  on  the  twelfth  of  July,  1781.  This 
was  less  than  a  month  after  a  marauding  expedition,  in  which 
were  some  refugees,  had  landed  at  Leete's  Island,  and  Simeon 
Leete  and  Ebenezer  Hart  had  lost  their  lives  in  beating  the 


I  Conn.  Ch.  Dors.,  ii.  192. 


o 

54  Early  History  of 

plunderers  off.1  Doubtless  under  an  angry  impulse  given  by 
this  tragedy,  "Sundry  inhabitants"  were  put  on  record  "as 
Inimical  to  the  Liberties  "  of  their  country.  I  trust  that  nobody 
now  believes  that  this  was  a  fair  description  of  men  many  of 
whom,  however  mistaken  in  opinion,  loved  American  liberty 
with  all  their  hearts,  but  believed,  with  that  spotless  patriot, 
William  Samuel  Johnson,  that  liberty  might  be  safe  under  the 
free  constitution  of  the  mighty  empire  of  which  they  all  had 
long  been  proud  of  being  subjects.  And  in  less  than  nine  years 
the  town  of  Guilford  seems  to  have  come  to  this  view  of  matters. 
On  the  twelfth  of  April,  1790,  it  was  ordered  that  the  names 
thus  enrolled  be  expunged,  and  that  the  "sd  enrollment  no 
longer  form  any  part  of  the  Records  of  this  Town."  The 
expunging  process  must  have  consisted  in  burning  a  loose  sheet 
of  paper,  for  there  is  no  space  for  the  enrollment  in  the  existing 
records,  and  it  can  never  have  been  placed  there.  Even  in  an 
hour  of  intense  and  natural  exasperation  the  Guilford  instinct  of 
justice  was  too  .strong  to  permit  good  neighbors  and  true  friends 
to  be  branded  for  life. 

Before  the  war  the  parish  must  have  grown  faster  than  one 
would  have  expected,  if,  as  a  fragment  of  a  letter  apparently 
written  in  1774  reports,  it  then  contained  thirty-seven  families." 
But  there  may  have  easily  been  an  abatement  of  unfriendly  feel- 
ing towards  the  Church  of  England  after  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp 
Act,  and  in  1772  Mr.  Hubbard  wrote  from  New  Haven  that  his 
congregation  had  increased  one-third  in  less  than  five  years,  and 
that  he  had  ' '  the  happiness  to  see  the  greatest  unanimity  reign- 
ing amongst  "  his  people  and  their  fellow  Christians.3  During 
the  war  the  parish  must  have  lost  ground,  and  I  have  the  author- 
ity of  Dr.  Bennett  for  the  statement,  coming  down,  I  suppose, 
as  a  tradition,  that  the  church  building  suffered  from  lawless 
violence.  The  lead  of  the  window  sashes  (bought,  as  our 
records  show,  from  the  First  Society,)  is  said  to  have  been 
appropriated  by  zealous  patriots,  and  run  into  bullets  to  be  fired 
at  King  George's  soldiers.  But  it  is  also  said  that  the  services 
on  Sunday  never  ceased,  though  laymen  commonly  conducted 


1  Smith's  Hist,  of  Guilford,  49-50. 

2  Christ  Ch.  Kec. 

.;  Onni.  C/i .  Dors.,  ii.  iSi. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  55 

them,  and  we  now  know  that  during  all  those  stormy  years  a 
priest  of  the  Church  led  here  from  time  to  time  the  worship  of 
the  congregation  according  to  the  order  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land. One  office  or  another  of  the  Prayer  Book,  as  Bela  Hub- 
bard's  New  Haven  records  show,  was  used  by  him  throughout 
the  period  of  the  war,  as  well  as  before  and  after.  And  probably 
no  year  passed  without  his  offering  here  the  memorial  sacrifice, 
to  maintain  their  share  in  which  his  friends  and  kinsmen,  fulfill- 
ing a  priesthood  as  real  as  his  own,  had  so  often  and  so  long 
offered  themselves  as  a  living  sacrifice. 

In  the  early  part  of  this  period,  too,  (1769,)  they  built  the 
pulpit  which  could  be  so  seldom  filled,  and  again  and  again  gave 
permission  for  the  building  of  pews  for  worshippers  whom  their 
fear  of  God,  and  not  their  admiration  for  a  man,  might  be  trusted 
to  draw  to  the  House  of  God.  And  they  could  not,  till  they 
must,  relinquish  the  hope  that  what  they  so  longed  for  and  had 
struggled  so  hard  to  secure,  the  regular  ministrations  of  the 
Church,  the  Society  in  England  would  at  last  consent  to  give 
them.  In  spite  of  its  resolution  to  establish  no  more  missions  in 
New  England,  and  suspending  its  rule  requiring  a  house  and 
glebe  as  the  condition  of  a  grant,  the  Society  had  sent  a  mission- 
ary to  Pomfret  in  1772.  This  exception  was  made  out  of  regard 
to  the  wishes  of  a  wealthy  layman,  Godfrey  Malbone,  who  him- 
self gave  largely  to  the  new  mission,  and  in  the  expectation  that 
the  usual  additional  provision  for  the  missionary  would  soon  be 
made.1  Even  before  this  excuse  for  a  fresh  application  had 
been  given,  or  in  January,  1771,  the  "parish  had  directed  the 
wardens  to  write  to  the  Venerable  Society,  asking  that  a  mis- 
sion might  be  established  here. '  And  after  the  favorable  action 
in  the  case  of  Pomfret,  in  September,  1773,  the  principal  layman 
of  New  Haven,  Enos  Ailing,  himself  a  member  of  the  Society, 
addressed  a  letter  to  the  secretary,  warmly  pleading  the  cause  of 
Guilford.3  Samuel  Johnson,  their  most  influential  friend,  was 
dead,  but  a  few  days  later  the  clergy  of  Connecticut,  assembled 
in  "a  voluntary  Convention,"  mentioned  the  desires  of  this 


1  Abst.  of  S.  P.  G..  1773;  Hist,  of  Ch.  in  Conn.,  i.  273-5.  281. 

2  Christ  Ch.  Rec. 

3  Lett,  of  S.  P.  G.  (Harwood  MS.),  vol.  B.  23  (2). 


56  Early  History  of 

parish  to  the  same  official.1  In  August,  1774,  the  parish  made, 
or  began  to  make,  what  was  perhaps  its  last  appeal,  in  which 
Abraham  Jarvis,  afterwards  Bishop  of  this  diocese,  may  have 
lent  his  assistance.2  But  the  Society  was  inexorable,  and  Guil- 
ford  was  left  to  practice  the  lesson,  for  which  it  has  had  much 
use,  of  self-reliance. 

Towards  the  close  of  our  present  period,  in  November,  1783, 
we  find  an  entry  which  suggests  that  the  parish  had  produced, 
and  was  making  use  of,  another  candidate  for  orders.  This  was 
young  Andrew  Fowler,  son  of  Andrew,  and  grandson  of  Mrs. 
Johnson's  sister,  Andrea  Morgan.  He  had  just  graduated  at 
New  Haven,  where  for  two  years  he  had  acted  as  lay-reader 
under  Mr.  Hubbard,  with  the  sanction  of  President  Stiles.  He 
was  afterwards  ordained  in  New  York  by  Bishop  Provoost,  and  is 
remembered  for  many  useful  labors,  among  the  rest  for  having 
presented  the  first  class  for  confirmation  in  the  diocese  of  South 
Carolina.3  Of  the  ministers  who  had  thus  far  been  reared  with- 
in the  territorial  limits  of  the  First  Society,  at  least  one-third,  as 
far  as  I  can  learn,  took  episcopal  orders. 

Seventeen  new  family  names  appear  on  the  records  between 
1767  and  1784,  those  of  Geers,  Powers,  Ranney,  L,eete,  Ruggles, 
Hotchkin  (Hotchkiss),  Ebair,  Hill,  Miller,  Fowler,  Foote, 
Smith,  Hall,  Cruttenden,  Ingraham,  Caldwell  and  Redfield.  I 
cannot  be  sure,  however,  that  all  of  them  belong  to  Guilford. 

The  next  and  last  period  of  our  early  history,  with  which 
the  narrative  reaches  the  point  where  the  old  records,  newlj- 
discovered,  meet  those  long  in  our  possession,  measures  sixteen 
years.  Opening  July  5,  1784,  it  closes  December  22,  1800, 
within  a  few  'days  of  the  beginning  of  this  century.  Throughout 
most  of  this  period  the  parish  was  engaged  in  efforts,  more  or 
less  successful,  and  made  in  connection  with  other  parishes,  to 
secure  clerical  services.  Such  efforts,  put  forth  in  a  time  of 
great  weakness  everywhere,  show  the  inextinguishable  energy 
and  courage  with  which  the  children  and  grandchildren  of  the 
founders  of  the  church  sought  to  perpetuate  the  good  work  of 


1  Conn.  Cli.  Docs.,  ii.  191. 

2  Ch.  Ch.  Rec. 

3  Christ  Ch.  Rec.;  Sprague,  Annals,  v.  428;   Perry's  History  of  the  American  Episcopal 
Church,  ii.  189. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  57 

their  fathers.  The  effects  of  the  war  had  been  disastrous  to  the 
cause  of  episcopacy,  and  the  Venerable  Society  could  not,  under 
its  charter,  employ  missionaries  outside  of  the  British  dominions. 
All  stipends  were  to  cease  on  the  twenty-ninth  of  September, 
1785.  *  Guilford  had  never  enjoyed  a  large  share  of  the  Society's 
bounty,  and  for  twenty  years  it  had  received  nothing.  Now,  all 
hope  of  assistance  from  that  quarter  was  finally  cut  off.  But 
many  congregations  had  leaned  on  the  Society  too  heavily  and 
too  long,  and  it  was  on  the  whole  a  very  good  thing  for  Ameri- 
can Episcopalians  that  they  were  at  last  compelled  to  pay  their 
own  bills.2  The  stimulating  effect  of  the  new  situation  seems 
illustrated  by  the  case  of  Branford,  where  the  parish,  flourishing 
in  1766,  then  practically  disappears  from  view  until  1784,  and 
the  organization  must  have  lapsed.  Life  was  not  extinct,  how- 
ever, and  the  names  of  fifty-four  members  in  the  year  last  men- 
tioned indicate  greater  strength  than  our  own  parish  possessed. 
And  at  Branford,  on  the  fifth  of  July,  1784,  a  meeting  was  held 
for  consultation  about  the  employment  of  a  clergyman,  in  which 
representatives  of  North  Guilford  and,  undoubtedly,  of  Guil- 
ford took  part.  The  parishes  wished  to  secure  the  services  of 
Mr.  Ashbel  Baldwin,  of  Ljtchfield,  then  a  lay-reader  waiting  for 
the  coming  of  a  Bishop  to  ordain  him.  Attention  may  have 
been  drawn  to  Mr.  Baldwin  by  the  fact  that  he  had  married,  or 
was  soon  to  marry,  a  granddaughter  of  Captain  Johnson  of  Guil- 
ford. Her  father,  Mr.  Samuel  Johnson,  was  authorized  to  make 
terms  with  Mr.  Baldwin,  and  it  would  seem  that  the  latter  must 
have  shown  some  disposition  to  accept  the  cure,  since  on  the 
fifteenth  of  November  the  parishes  voted  to  offer  him,  for  a  year, 
^"80  of  the  currency  of  the  commonwealth  (about  ,£40  sterling). 
Branford  paying  half  the  amount.  But  by  this  time  he  had 
probably  received  overtures  from  his  birthplace,  and  he  became 
the  incumbent  of  St.  Michael's,  Litchfield,  on  his  ordination  a 
few  months  later.3  But  before  the  end  of  November  Branford 
had  begun  negotiations  with  another  clergyman,  the  Rev.  James 
Sayre,  and  on  the  twentieth  of  December,  1784,  this  parish 


1  Abst.  ofS.  P.  G.,  1785. 

2  Conn.  Ch.  Docs.,  ii.  8,  q. 

3  Bailey's  Trinity  Church.  10,  20-1  ;  Sprague's  Annals,  v.  352;  Bronson's   "Conn.  Cur- 
rency." 135-6,  in  .iV.  H.  Col.  Hist.  Soc.  Pap.,  vol  i.    The  date  of   Mr.  Baldwin's  marriage  is 
not  known. 


58  Early  History  of 

appointed  a  committee  to  act  with  representatives  of  Braiiford 
and  North  Guilford  in  making  an  engagement  with  Mr.  Sayre. 
He  appears  to  have  served  the  three  parishes  during  the  year 
1785,  residing  in  Branford,  and  they  desired  to  retain  his  send- 
ees for  another  year.  Guilford,  seconded  by  North  Guilfoid, 
offered  him  inducements  to  remove  his  residence  to  the  former 
place.  As  one  of  these  inducements  was  the  payment  of  one- 
fourth  of  the  rent  of  a  house  it  is  clear  that  at  that  period  (Jan- 
uary, 1786,)  this  parish  had  no  rectory,  and  the  presumption 
that  it  had  never  been  able  to  purchase  a  glebe  and  house,  as 
required  by  the  Venerable  Society,  is  strengthened.  Mr.  Sayre, 
however,  could  not  be  persuaded  to  keep  the  cure,  and  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1786,  the  three  parishes  were  consulting  about  another 
minister.  Their  late  incumbent,  a  Scotchman  by  birth,  though 
a  graduate  of  the  college  at  Philadelphia,  in  the  class  of  Bishop 
White,  was  evidently  a  good  and  long  a  useful  man.  But  his 
conservatism  was  so  intense  and  so  stubborn  that  he  refused  to 
accept  the  Prayer  Book  as  revised  in  1789  by  the  newly  formed 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  tempted  one  or  two  Connecticut 
parishes  into  flat  rebellion,  and  finally  died  insane.1  For  two 
years  whatever  pastoral  oversight  this  parish  enjoyed  seems  to 
have  been  that  of  its  old  friend,  Bela  Hubbard. 

In  common  with  other  parishes,  however,  our  own  had  now 
a  share  in  the  ministrations  of  a  chief  pastor.  The  first  Ameri- 
can Bishop,  of  what  we  call  the  Anglican  Communion,  Samuel 
Seabury,  had  arrived  in  Connecticut  in  June,  1785,  after  having 
obtained  in  Scotland,  at  the  request  of  the  clergy  of  Connecticut, 
the  consecration  which  was  refused  him  in  England.  Complete 
reports  of  Bishop  Seabury's  episcopal  visitations  do  not  exist, 
but  we  know  that  he  came  to  Guilford  in  July,  1786.  On  the 
twenty-sixth  and  twenty-seventh  of  that  month  he  had  ordained 
Benjamin  Lindsay  successively  deacon  and  priest,  and  Mr. 
Lindsay  was  then  ' '  Licensed  for  North  Carolina. ' ' :  The  Bishop 
of  Connecticut  had  for  the  time  being,  and  in  a  certain  degree, 
taken  the  place  once  held  with  respect  to  the  American  churches 
by  the  Bishop  of  London,  and  candidates  for  orders,  from  New 


1  Bailey,  21-3;  Rec.  of  Christ  Ch.;  Rec.  of  St.  John's  Ch.  (North   Guilford);  Hist,  of  Ch. 
in  Conn.,  i.  415,  421-7  ;  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Rev.  William  Smith,  D.  D.,  i.  365. 

2  Journal  of  Connecticut  Convention,  1882,  p.  154. 


Ctnist  Church  Parish,   G  nil  ford,    Conn. 


59 


Hampshire  to  Georgia,  now  made  the  journey  to  Connecticut  as 
they  would  once  have  made  the  journey  to  England.  Bishop 
Seabury  had  as  yet  no  jurisdiction  beyond  Connecticut,  but 
Episcopalians  who  recognized  and  sought  the  benefit  of  the 
powers  inherent  in  his  office,  would  respect  the  licenses  to  offi- 


LORENZO  T.  BENNETT,  D.  D. 


ciate  which  he  gave,  as  well  as  his  letters  of  orders.  That  a 
man  should  be  made  deacon  one  day  and  priest  the  next  was  in 
accordance  with  Anglican  usage,  when  the  candidate  (as,  prob- 
ably, in  the  present  instance)  could  not  conveniently  remain 
long  within  easy  access  to  a  Bishop.  But  it  shows  how  little 


60  Early  History  of 

importance  was  attached  to  the  office  of  deacon,  in  itself  consid- 
ered, as  is  unhappily  still  the  case.  Whether  confirmation  was 
administered  at  this  time  I  have  been  unable  to  learn.  But  if 
this  was  Bishop  Seabury's  first  visit  it  seems  almost  certain  that 
Mr.  Hubbard,  who  was  present,  had  the  happiness  of  claiming 
the  apostolic  rite  for  the  few  surviving  founders  of  the  parish, 
with  their  children  and  their  grandchildren.  Mr.  Hubbard's 
mother  was  still  living,  with  her  husband,1  Captain  Johnson, 
and  it  would  not  be  very  hard  to  construct  a  long  list  of  persons 
who  might  then  have  been  confirmed.  Classes  were  large  in 
those  days,  when  they  often  included  all  or  most  of  the  com- 
municants of  a  congregation.  Bishop  Seabury  is  reported  to 
have  found  the  church  building  so  nearly  a  ruin  that  he  thought 
that  little  remained  but  to  say  the  burial  office  over  it.  And  if 
other  information  is  correct  the  structure  may  at  least  have  been 
reduced  to  something  like  the  condition  in  which  it  was  when 
its  builders  first, began  to  use  it,  with  unglazed  windows.  But 
the  "spiritual  house,"  the  real  church,  although  it  was  also 
weakened,  and  may  even  have  become  weaker,  still  stood,  and 
continued  to  stand,  on  the  One  Foundation. 

Our  own  records  fail  us  for  nearly  twelve  years  after  August 
28,  1786,  or  until  April  23,  1798.  The  two  Guilford  parishes 
and  Branford  did  not  maintain  their  association  throughout  this 
period,  and  North  Guilford,  which  now  had  a  parsonage  to  offer, 
seems  to  have  attempted  in  1787  to  obtain  the  ministrations  of 
Ashbel  Baldwin,  asking  two-thirds  of  his  time.  Mr.  Baldwin, 
one-half  of  whose  time  was  required  at  Litchfield,  was  present 
at  a  vestry-meeting  at  North  Guilford  in  June  of  that  year,  and 
probably  gave  the  proposal  serious  consideration.  It  is  not  un- 
likely that  our  own  parish  was  expected  to  employ  Mr.  Baldwin 
a  third  of  the  time,  but  he  decided  to  remain  at  lyitchfield." 
While  the  matter  was  pending,  as  I  infer,  Branford  invited  the 
churchmen  of  the  two  Guilfords  to  share  the  privilege  of 
listening  to  the  Rev.  Dr.  Learning  on  the  Sunday  after  Easter- 


1  Her  name  seems  to  have  remained  until  her  death  on  the   list  of   members  of  the- 
First  Church.     But  it  appears  there  only  as  that  of  the  wife  of  Daniel  Hubbard,  and  she 
is  likely  to  have  become  an  Episcopalian  with  her  father,  brother  and  children. 

2  St.  John's  Ch.  Rec.,  North  Guilford  ;  St.  Michael's  Ch.  Rec..  I,itchfield,  communicated 
by  the  Rector,  the  Rev.  Storrs  O.  Seymour. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,  Conn.  61 

And  when  we  find  that  in  1788  that  parish  is  believed  to  have 
passed  under  the  charge  of  the  Rev.  Edward  Blakeslee  (then  in 
Deacon's  orders),  who  remained  there  until  April,  1790,  one 
conjectures,  though  one  can  do  little  more,  that  his  cure  may 
have  included  Guilford,  if  not  also  North  Guilford.1  For  the 
year  1791  we  have  no  information  whatever.  June  i,  1792, 
Bishop  Seabury  visited  Killingworth  and  Guilford  for  consulta- 
tion, and  as  a  result  the  Rev.  David  Butler,  ordained  deacon  on 
the  tenth  of  June,  was  licensed  for  the  old  cure  of  Bela  Hub- 
bard,  including  North  Guilford.  A  year  later,  having  been 
ordained  priest,  he  was  regularly  appointed  to  the  cure.2  Bran- 
ford  probably  expected  to  have  a  minister  of  its  own,  though  the 
hope  does  not  seem  to  have  been  realized.3  During  Mr.  Butler's 
incumbency  confirmation  was  twice  administered  in  each  of  his 
three  parishes.  At  the  first  visitation,  October  17,  18  and  19, 
1792,  seven  persons  were  confirmed  in  North  Guilford,  one  in 
Guilford  and  five  in  Killingworth  ;  at  the  second,  in  June,  1794, 
twenty-four  were  confirmed  in  North  Guilford,  four  in  Guilford, 
and  twenty-seven  in  Killingworth.4  The  small  size  of  the 
classes  at  Guilford  strengthens  one's  belief  that  most  of  those 
of  sufficient  age  had  been  confirmed  in  1786.  But  it  is  also 
probable  that  this  church  was  at  that  time  the  least  prosperous 
of  the  three,  and  that  St.  John's,  North  Guilford,  was  the 
strongest.  And  the  fact  that  in  1794  the  Bishop  remained  three 
days,  including  a  Sunday,  at  North  Guilford,  and  gave  but  one 
•  day  to  Guilford,  confirms  the  opinion,  otherwise  supported,  that 
Mr.  Butler's  residence  was  at  the  former  place,  where  was, 
apparently,  the  only  parsonage  in  the  cure.  At  Killingworth, 
where  Mr.  Hubbard  had  doubtless  conducted  occasional  services 
during  the  twenty-seven  years  which  had  passed  since  he  relin- 
quished the  cure,  and  whither  he  took  the  Bishop  in  October, 
1791,  to  meet  the  "  scattered  Church  people,"  there  seems  to- 
have  been  no  church  building.  Bishop  Seabury  was  therefore 
twice  indebted  to  the  hospitality  of  Congregationalists  for  a 


1  Bailey's  Trinity  Ch..  w.Journ.  of  Conn.  Conv.,  1882,  pp.  157,  158. 

2  Jour,  of  Conn.  Conv..  1882,  p.  158 ;  MS.  Diary  of  Bishop  Seabury.     For  the  last  refer- 
ence I  am  indebted  to  the  Rev.  W.  J.  Seabury.  D.  D.,  of  New  York. 

3  Bailey's  Trinity  Ch..  22-3,32:  Life  of  Seabury.  440. 

4  Diary  (by  the  kindness  both  of  Dr.  Seabury  and  of   Dr.  Hart,  of  Trinity   College); 
Life  of  Seabury.  426.  440. 


62  Early  History  of 

place  in  which  to  exercise  one  of  his  chief  episcopal  functions. 
And,  perhaps  largely  because  it  had  no  house  of  worship,  the 
Killingworth  congregation  now  disappears  from  our  ecclesias- 
tical records  even  more  suddenly  than  it  had  appeared.  We 
hear  no  more  of  an  Episcopal  church  there  for  eighty  years,  the 
Church  of  the  Holy  Advent,  Clinton,  being  organized  as  a  wholly 
new  congregation,  in  1874. 

Mr.  Butler  is  said  to  have  assumed  the  rectorship  of  St. 
Michael's  Church,  Litchfield,  which  Mr.  Baldwin  relinquished 
in  1793,  in  June,  1794,  but  the  records  of  St.  John's,  North 
Guilford,  show  that  he  rendered  clerical  services  there  until  Jan- 
uary, 1795.  He  was  afterwards  for  many  years  the  highly 
valued  rector  of  St.  Paul's  Church,  Troy,  N.  Y.,  and  his  son, 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Clement  M.  Butler,  became  distinguished  as  a 
scholar  and  professor.  * 

For  the  three  following  years,  1795,  1796  and  1797,  all  sources 
of  information  fail  us,  unless  we  apply  to  this  period  a  family  tra- 
dition which  asserts  that  for  a  while  only  two  men  went  to 
church,  their  families  forming  the  congregation,  and  one  of  the 
two  reading  service. '  As  the  parish  showed  some  activity  im- 
mediately before  and  immediately  afterwards,  these  years  may 
reasonably  be  regarded  as  the  time  when  it  reached  the  lowest 
point  of  depression.  It  would  seem  that  there  was  a  raiding  of 
its  energies  at  the  close  of  the  war,  but  that  the  difficulty  of 
securing  permanent  clerical  services,  and  the  weakness,  not  to 
say  the  unpopularity,  of  the  Church  everywhere,  discouraged  its 
supporters  here.  But  the  parish  could  not  die  as  long  as  there 
was  even  a  single  household  whose  members  were  weekly  sum- 
moned by  its  head  to  worship  in  God's  House.  On  the  twenty- 
first  of  January,  1798,  we  find  Dr.  Hubbard  spending  a  Sunday 
in  Guilford,  and  three  months  later  (April  23)  Charles  Collins 
and  Thomas  Powers  were  elected  wardens.  The  same  choice, 
the  second  name  being  put  first,  was  repeated  for  many  years, 
and  Thomas  Powers,  the  one  man  who,  it  is  said,  never  even 
thought  of  allowing  his  children  to  renounce  the  worship  and 


1  Sprague,  Annals,  v.  389-91 ;  Gen.  Conv.Jour.,  Reprint  of  Hawks  and  Perry,  i.  175.  212. 

2  Information  given  by  Mrs.  Daniel   M.  Prentice,  a   native   of   Guilford,  and  grand- 
daughter of  Mr.  Thomas  Powers,  one  of  those  mentioned  above. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  63 

order  of  the  historic  church,  was  the  chief  officer  of  this  parish, 
almost  if  not  quite  continuously,  until  two  years  before  he  died, 
at  the  age  of  eighty,  in  1822. *  But  these  facts  show  that  others, 
who  might  have  lost  all  hope,  as  good  and  faithful  men  have 
sometimes  been  forced  to  do,  proved  their  essential  fidelity  by 
gathering  again  about  the  standard  of  the  Prayer  Book.  What 
had  been  probably  the  darkest  period  of  our  history  was  now 
over. 

On  the  sixteenth  of  May,  1798,  it  was  voted  that  "  Mr 
Friend  Collens  and  Tim0  Johnson  be  a  Committee  with  the 
Wardens  to  repair  the  publick  Building  belonging  to  ' '  the  con- 
gregation. If  the  phrase  "publick  Building"  describes  the 
church  (and  I  do  not  know  what  else  it  can  mean),  it  seems  to 
show  a  somewhat  secularized  conception  of  things  ecclesiastical, 
such  as  was  common  enough  in  those  days.  We  wonder,  too, 
whether  the  dilapidations  of  the  war  had  gone  so  long  unre- 
stored.  If  so,  there  had  certainty  seemed  to  be  no  help  for  it, 
and  the  present  action  exhibits  the  reviving  courage  and  higher 
purpose  of  the  people.  At  the  beginning  of  the  next  year 
(1799)  rates  were  levied  by  the  parish,  as  the  existing  law  per- 
mitted, and  a  committee  was  appointed,  consisting  of  the  two 
last  named,  "to  consult  with  the  other  parishes  Respecting  a 
Minester."  The  "  other  parishes  "  were  probably  North  Guil- 
ford and  Branford,  nothing  more  being  heard  of  Killingworth. 
A  word  should  be  said  here  of  those  who  may  be  called  the 
second  founders  of  the  parish,  though  others  entitled  to  mention 
must  be  passed  by  without  notice.  Thomas  Powers,  evidently 
at  this  period  the  leading  man,  was  not  of  Guilford  stock,  hav- 
ing come  here  from  Groton  upwards  of  thirty  years  before. 
Charles  Collins,  his  associate  in  the  wardenship,  was,  it  would 
seem,  one  of  the  younger  children  of  Samuel  Collins,  the  first 
clerk  of  the  parish.  Friend  Collins  was  the  grandson  of  Oliver 
Collins,  the  brother  of  Samuel,  and  his  descendants  remain 
among  us.  Timothy  Johnson  was,  I  suppose,  the  grandson  of 
Captain  Johnson  by  his  son  Nathaniel,  and  though  a  much 
younger  man  than  the  others,  was  now  clerk,  and  a  very  com- 

i  Christ  Ch.  Kec.  (old  and  new);  Smith's  Hist.  ofGnilfttrd.  no. 


64  Early  History  of 

petent  one.  The  old  families  of  the  parish  were  therefore  active 
and  useful,  while  it  was  proving  the  value  of  new  blood.  No 
vestrymen  had  been  elected  at  this  date,  the  parish  contenting 
itself,  as  at  the  beginning  of  its  history,  with  churchwardens 
and  clerk. 

In  the  years  1799  and  1800  the  Rev.  Ashbel  Baldwin, 
though  now  settled  at  Stratford,  is  believed  to  have  disposed  of 
some  spare  Sundays  at  Branford.  And  on  the  third  of  Decem- 
ber, 1799,  "  this  Society  "  directed  its  "Committee"  (chosen 
in  November,  and  perhaps  corresponding  to  a  vestry),  to  engage 
Mr.  Baldwin  for  ten  Sundays  of  the  next  year.  Our  records  do 
not  inform  us  that  the  committee  was  successful,  nor  do  those 
of  Stratford  help  us.  But  as  Mr.  Baldwin  almost  at  the  close  of 
his  rectorship  in  the  latter  parish  could  give  a  third  of  his  time 
to  Trumbull  (1821-2)  it  is  highly  probable  that  he  gave  a  fifth 
of  it  to  Guilford  in  the  year  1800.  Mr.  Baldwin,  so  much  in 
request  in  this  neighborhood,  was  for  years  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant members  of  our  Diocesan  Convention,  and  was  six  times 
elected  secretary  of  the  House  of  Deputies  in  the  General  Con- 
vention.1 He  is  still  pleasantly  remembered  here  by  descend- 
ants of  his  wife's  family. 

On  the  twenty-second  of  December,  1800,  a  committee  was 
appointed  to  meet  committees  from  Branford  and  North  Guil- 
ford "to  agree  with  them  in  procuring  Mr.  Burgis  to  preach 
with  us."  Thus  steps  were  taken  which  led  to  the  first  rector- 
ship of  the  present  century,  Mr.  Nathan  Bennett  Burgess,  rep- 
resented to-day  among  our  communicants  by  his  daughter,  Mrs. 
William  Bushnell  of  Madison,  being  ordained  the  following 
month,  and  serving  the  parish  for  the  next  five  years.2 
Although  it  carries  us  a  little  beyond  our  limit,  it  is  proper  to 
say  that  Branford  seems  never  actually  to  have  formed  a  part  of 
the  cure  of  Mr.  Burgess,  and  that  the  new  "  North  Bristol  Epis- 
copal Society,"  organized  in  July,  1800,  promptly  took  its  place. 
North  Bristol  (now  North  Madison)  was  then  part  of  this  town- 


1  Christ   L'h.  Rec.;   Bailey's    Trinity   Ch.,  32  ;  Jour.   Conn.  Conv.,  1822,  p.  6 ;   Sprague 
Annals,  v.  352;  Bishop  White's  Memoirs  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Ch..  ad  ed.,  43,47,  50, 
209,  216,  224.     MS.  notes  in  my  copy  of  the  Memoirs  show  that  Mr.  Baldwin   disliked  the 
drudgery  of  his  office. 

2  Christ  Ch.  Rec.;  Jour.  Conn.  Conv.,  1882,  p.  161. 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guilford,   Conn.  65 

ship,  and  Episcopalians  living  there,  and  still  farther  east,  in 
North  Killingworth,  had  long  been  connected  with  St.  John's 
parish.  Before  Mr.  Burgess  resigned  there  were  large  additions 
to  the  new  congregation  from  North  Killingworth,  and  what  is 
now  known  as  Emmanuel  Church  was  built  a  little  east  of  the 
Hammonassett  (\vhich  forms  the  boundary),  in  1804.  That 
parish  has  therefore  no  historical  connection  with  the  earlier 
congregation  at  Killingworth  (Clinton),  though  when  the  town 
was  divided  the  northern  portion  took  the  ancient  name,  and  the 
present  Killingworth  church  has  sometimes  been  confounded 
with  that  gathered  by  Bela  Hubbard  on  the  shore.1 

The  numerical  strength  of  this  parish,  at  the  close  of  our 
last  period,  can  only  be  vaguely  estimated.  Three  years  later, 
on  the  first  of  January,  1804,  a  list  of  parishioners  was  begun, 
which  contains  eighty-seven  names,  but  it  is  not  probable  that 
all  were  members  of  the  congregation  at  one  time.  In  the  spring 
of  1807  (March  or  May),  a  few  months  before  the  Rev.  David 
Baldwin  began  his  long  and  faithful  rectorship,  the  parish  con- 
tained forty  families;  in  1811  there  were  forty-eight,  North 
Killingworth  then  having  forty-nine.  On  the  whole,  taking 
into  account  the  depressed  condition  of  the  church  in  the  last 
decade  of  the  eighteenth  century,  it  seems  a  fair  inference  that 
it  numbered  much  less  than  fort}'  families  in  1800,  and  that  it 
rapidly  gained  strength  under  Mr.  Burgess.2 

The  new  names  which  appear  during  this  period  are  nine  ; 
Parmelee,  Halleck,  Handy,  Lee,  Ames  (or  Amis),  Hoadley, 
Loyzell,  Spencer  and  Loper.  More  than  half  of  them  have  now 
disappeared,  and  many  which  have  long  been  household  words 
among  us  are  absent  from  the  records  during  the  first  half  cen- 
tury. One  individual  name,  foremost  from  the  beginning, 
accompanies  us  almost  to  the  close  of  our  story.  Captain 
Nathaniel  Johnson,  having  passed  his  eighty-eighth  birthday, 
laid  aside  a  heavy  load  of  age  and  misfortune  on  the  twenty - 
ninth  of  June,  1793.  He  survived  his  associate,.  William  Ward, 
by  more  than  thirty  years.  Edmund  Ward  had  died  in  1779; 


1  Ibid.;  Bailey's  Trinity  Of,  32  ;  Emmanuel  Ch.  Kec.  (kindly   communicated   by  Rev. 
W.  C.  Knowles,  rector);  St.  John's  Ch.  Kec. 

2  Christ  Ch.  Rec.;Journ.  of  Conn.  Corn'.,  1811,  Reprint,  p.  65. 


66        Early  History  of  Christ  Church  Parish,  Guilford,  Conn. 

Samuel  Collins  in  1784  ;  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson,  at  least  as  much 
concerned  as  an}-  other  native  of  Guilford  in  the  task  of  laying 
foundations  here,  in  1772.  Captain  Johnson  may  have  been,  as 
it  was  fit  that  he  should  be,  the  last  survivor  of  those  whom 
higher  hands  had  framed  into  this  our  spiritual  house  fifty 
years  before. 

In  closing  this  long  narrative,  defective  in  spite  of  its  length, 
I  need  only  say  that  the  qualities  which  in  a  manner  compelled 
the  church  to  live,  and  to  live  on  for  five  generations,  when  hos- 
tility and  neglect  combined  with  poverty  and  disappointment  to 
crush  its  life,  are  present  in  vigor  to-day,  as  the  admirable 
achievement  of  the  last  few  months  has  shown.  We  can  trust 
them  to  endure,  and  to  perpetuate  the  life  which  they  have 
maintained,  for  five  generations  more,  if  they  are  still  nourished 
by  that  fear  of  God,  and  that  love  for  the  ordinances  of  Christ, 
in  which  the  life  of  this  church  began.  It  will  still  live,  and 
still  glorify  God  and  bless  men,  only  as  it  still  bears  the  dew  of 
its  birth. 


WILLIAM  G.  ANDREWS,  D.  D. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  NOTE. 


Mr.  Burgess  seems  to  have  held  the  rectorship  until  Sep- 
tember i,  1805.  He  was  born  on  the  fourteenth  of  September, 
1771,  in  that  part  of  Woodbury  which  is  now  Washington.  He 
continued  to  reside  in  Connecticut,  where  he  served  two  or  three 
parishes,  until  1835.  He  was  then  transferred  to  the  diocese  of 
New  York,  and  long  officiated  in  that  portion  of  it  which  is  now 
Central  New  York.  He  died  in  Utica,  February  20,  1854,  at 
the  age  of  eighty-two.  "  His  end  was  calm  and  peaceful." 

I  am  informed  that  Mr.  David  Baldwin  began  to  serve  the 
congregation  in  November,  1806.  At  that  period  candidates  for 
orders  were  allowed  to  preach,  as  do  Congregational  licentiates, 
and  though  Mr.  Baldwin  was  formally  declared  the  choice  of  the 
parish  for  its  minister  on  the  twelfth  of  the  following  March,  he 
was  not  ordained  deacon  until  the  first  of  September,  1807.  He 
was  a  native  of  Litchfield,  where  he  was  born  February  4,  1780, 
land  he  was  the  son  of  William  Baldwin,  a  first  cousin  of  the 
clergyman  so  often  mentioned  in  the  latter  part  of  the  address. 
His  cure  was  the  same  as  that  of  Mr.  Burgess,  including  there- 
fore North  Guilford  and  North  Killingworth,  then  still  some- 
times called  North  Bristol.  In  this  cure  Mr.  Baldwin  may  be 
said  to  have  remained  throughout  his  ministry  of  half  a  century, 
since  he  held  the  last-named  parish  until  1858,  when  the  infirm- 
ities of  age  compelled  him  to  desist  from  pastoral  work.  He 
resigned  the  Guilford  church,  however,  at  Easter  (March  30), 
1834,  immediately  taking  that  at  Branford,  to  which  he  gave  a 
third  of  his  time  for  the  next  four  years.  He  relinquished  North 
Guilford  in  1851,  but  when  he  finally  retired  in  1858  he  united 


jo  Early  History  of 

the  cure  of  Zion  Church,  North  Branford,  with  that  of  Killing- 
worth.  At  this  date,  Bishop  Williams,  describing  him  as  "  The 
Senior  Presbyter  of  the  Diocese,"  said  that  he  "carried  with 
him  into  his  retirement  the  affectionate  veneration  of  his  breth- 
ren, and  the  blessing  of  those  to  whom  he  had  so  long  and  so 
faithfully  ministered."  His  home  continued  to  be  at  Guilford, 
where  in  1816  he  had  married  Ruth,  the  daughter  of  Wyllis 
Elliot  (a  member  of  a  family  first  named  on  our  records  in  1803) , 
and  where  he  died  on  the  second  of  August,  1862.  His  connec- 
tion with  this  community,  and  in  some  sense  with  this  congrega- 
tion, therefore  lasted  almost  fifty-six  years,  throughout  which  he 
was  to  all  men  a  model  of  Christian  fidelity.  And  the  members 
of  his  widely  scattered  flock,  whom  he  never  neglected  in  heat 
or  cold,  in  sunshine  or  storm,  though  often  exposed,  as  he  went 
to  and  fro  on  horseback,  to  severe  hardship,  and  to  whom  his 
house  was  open  for  unstinted  hospitality,  found  in  him  a  noble 
example  of  that  unswerving  devotion  to  pastoral  duty  which 
distinguished  the  early  representatives  of  Connecticut  church- 
manship. 

From  the  first  of  July,  1834,  until  Easter  Monday  (April 
21),  1835,  the  parish  was  under  the  care  of  a  deacon,  who  was 
ordained  at  the  former  date,  and  who  preached  his  first  sermon 
in  the  old  church  on  the  Green,  L,orenzo  Thompson  Bennett. 
For  the  first  time  this  congregation  now  claimed  the  entire  ser- 
vice of  its  minister.  Mr.  Bennett  was  temporarily  separated 
from  a  people  already  warmly  attached  to  him,  by  an  invitation 
from  Trinity  Church,  New  Haven,  of  which  he  became  assistant 
minister.  Three  short  rectorships  followed.  On  the  nineteenth 
of  May,  1835,  the  Rev.  William  Nassau  Hawks  was  chosen 
rector,  but  the  failure  of  his  voice  compelled  him  to  resign  in 
the  following  October.  Mr.  Hawks  was  a  native  of  Newbern, 
North  Carolina,  and  the  brother  of  two  distinguished  clergymen, 
both  of  them,  like  himself,  canonically  connected  for  brief 
periods  with  this  diocese.  One  was  Francis  lyister  Hawks,  very 
eminent  for  many  years  in  New  York.  The  other  was  Cicero 
Stephens  Hawks,  for  nearly  twenty-four  years  Bishop  of  Mis- 
souri. Mr.  Hawks  returned  to  his  native  state,  where  he  was 
able  after  a  while  to  resume  his  ministry.  During  the  latter 


Christ  Chunk  Parish,   Guilford,  Conn.  71 

part  of  his  life  he  was  rector  of  Trinity  Church,  Columbus. 
Georgia.  He  died,  as  I  infer,  early  in  the  year  1866.  On  the 
twenty-seventh  of  March,  1836,  the  Rev.  Levi  Hannaford  Corson 
assumed  the  rectorship,  which  he  seems  to  have  retained  until 
the  nineteenth  of  March,  1838.  Mr.  Corson  was  ordained  in 
this  diocese  in  1831,  and  had  served  the  parish  at  Windham. 
While  here  he  conducted  a  school,  and  I  am  told  by  one  of  his 
pupils,  Mr.  Henry  Rogers,  formerly  of  Stony  Creek,  and  now  of 
New  Haven,  that  he  furnished  the  design  of  the  present  church, 
adapting  it  from  that  of  St.  Thomas's  Church,  New  York,  of 
which  Dr.  F.  L,.  Hawks  was  then  rector,  and  which  stood  on 
the  corner  of  Broadway  and  Houston  street.  The  corner-stone 
of  our  church  was  laid  during  Mr.  Corson's  rectorship,  June  24, 
1836,  and  Mr.  Bennett  came  from  New  Haven  to  deliver  the 
address.  Mr.  Corson  removed  from  Guilford  to  Branford,  where 
he  succeeded  Mr.  Baldwin,  and  where  he  remained  about  two 
years.  He  resided  in  the  parish,  as  Mr.  Baldwin  had  not  done, 
and  "  the  parish  flourished  under  his  ministry."  About  1840 
he  was  transferred  to  Western  New  York,  and  before  1856  to 
Michigan,  where  he  continued  his  labors  nearly  thirty  years 
longer,  for  the  last  ten  years  at  Jonesville.  He  died  February 
23,  1884,  in  his  eighty-third  year.  On  the  eighth  of  April,  1838, 
the  Rev.  Edward  J.  Darken,  M.  D.,  recently  rector  of  Reading 
and  Weston,  took  charge  of  the  parish,  of  which  he  continued 
rector  until  the  tenth  of  June,  1840.  During  his  rectorship  the 
new  church  was  consecrated  by  Bishop  Brownell,  December  12, 
1838.  In  accepting  his  resignation  the  vestry  testified  to  the 
value  of  his  "  public  ministrations."  He  remained  for  several 
years  in  Connecticut,  though  not  in  eh-arge  of  a  parish,  and,  if  I 
mistake  not,  engaged  in  the  practice  of  medicine.  He  contin- 
ued, however,  to  be  a  clergyman,  and  about  1844  was  transferred 
to  the  diocese  of  Massachusetts,  and  almost  immediately,  as  it 
would  seem,  to  that  of  Illinois,  thence  going  to  England,  of 
which  country  he  is  said  to  have  been  a  native,  and  where  he  is 
supposed  to  have  died. 

On  the  twelfth  of  July,  1840,  the  Rev.  L.  T.  Bennett  was 
heartily  welcomed  back  to  this  parish,  and  began  his  mem- 
orable rectorship  of  forty  years.  It  was  closed  by  his  resigna- 


72  Early  History  of 

tion,  due  to  his  advanced  age,  on  the  anniversary  of  his  settle- 
ment, July  12,  1880.  He  was  still  connected  with  the  parish  as 
rector-emeritus,  and  assisted  at  the  celebration  of  the  Holy  Com- 
munion the  day  before  his  death,  which  occurred  very  suddenly 
on  the  second  of  September,  1889.  He  had  then  nearly  com- 
pleted his  eighty-fourth  year,  though  apparently  as  vigorous  in 
body  as  he  was  in  mind.  Including  his  service  here  during  his 
diaconate,  he  had  been  a  minister  of  this  parish  only  about  three 
weeks  less  than  half  a  century,  while  his  ministry  and  Mr.  Bald- 
win's cover  more  than  three-quarters  of  a  century.  In  what 
belongs  to  outward  progress  the  most  noteworthy  event  of  Dr. 
Bennett's  rectorship  was  the  erection,  in  1872,  at  the  cost  of 
$5,000,  of  a  new  chancel,  in  which  the  altar,  the  symbol  and 
chief  instrument  of  worship,  was  raised  to  its  proper  place,  and 
which,  as  containing  the  two  divisions  of  sanctuary  and  choir, 
gave  room  for  all  parts  of  worship  within  its  own  limits.  But  a 
still  better  evidence  of  the  worth  of  his  services  to  the  congrega- 
tion is  the  record  of  forty  years  of  unbroken  peace,  accompanied 
by  a  growing  diligence  and  zeal  in  all  Christian  labors.  Of  all 
that  was  admirable  in  Dr.  Bennett's  ministry  it  is  impossible  to 
speak  here,  but  his  Bishop's  testimony,  given  at  the  Diocesan 
Convention  of  1890,  should  be  treasured  in  this  parish: 
"  Wherever  he  had  served  and  wherever  he  was  known,  his 
memory  is  warmly  cherished,  and  he  is  remembered  with  deep 
respect,  as  a  godly  man  and  a  faithful  and  self-sacrificing  '  min- 
ister of  Christ.'  As  I  stood  by  his  grave  on  a  calm,  peaceful 
and  bright  day  in  September  la.st — a  day  that  was  a  fit  emblem 
of  his  character  and  life — and  committed  his  body  to  the  earth 
to  await  its  resurrection,  there  came  to  my  mind  the  words  of 
our  Lord  spoken  of  Nathaniel,  'An  Israelite  indeed  in  whom 
there  was  no  guile.'  '  Dr.  Bennett  was  born  in  Galway,  Sara- 
toga county,  New  York,  November  13,  1805,  though  of  Con- 
necticut ancestry.  His  youth  was  spent  in  New  Haven,  under 
the  pastoral  care  of  Dr.  Harry  Croswell,  of  Trinity  Church.  He 
graduated  at  New  Haven  in  1825,  and  then  received  a  commis- 
sion in  the  navy,  in  which  he  served  six  or  seven  years.  He 
began  his  theological  studies  under  Dr.  Croswell  while  still  a 
lieutenant,  and  thus  he  belonged  to  Connecticut,  as  a  man  and 


Christ  Church  Parish,   Guitford,   Conn.  73" 

a  minister,  as  truly  as  in  his  pastoral  life  he  belonged  to  Guil- 
ford.  A  superb  altar,  made  in  Italy,  has  very  recently  been 
presented  as  a  memorial  gift,  by  his  daughter,  Mrs.  T.  H. 
Bishop,  to  the  church  in  which  her  father  was  trained  and  began 
his  service  in  the  priesthood,  and  of  which  she  is  herself  a 
member. 

The  present  rector  took  charge  on  the  Sunday  after  Easter 
(April  24),  1881. 

The  parish  now  numbers  (according  to  the  report  presented 
to  the  Bishop  in  June,  1894,)  one  hundred  and  ten  families, 
with  one  hundred  and  sixty-five  (registered)  communicants.  It 
holds  property  which  had  yielded,  during  the  year  ending  last 
Kaster,  $523.62,  and  the  total  amount  of  income  and  contribu- 
tions for  that  year  was  $2,299.08. 


NOTE — The  publisher  is  indebted  to  Miss  Elizabeth  M.  Beardsley  of 
New  Haven  for  the  engraving  of  Dr.  Johnson.  It  was  prepared  for  the 
late  Dr.  Beardsley's  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Sainuel Johnson,  and  was 
kindly  forwarded  by  Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  of  the  Riverside 
Press,  Cambridge.  The  cut  of  the  present  rector  of  Christ  Church  was 
loaned  by  the  Rev.  J.  Frederick  Sexton,  of  St.  Peter's  Church,  Cheshire, 
editor  of  The  Rector's  Assistant\-ao\i  The  Connecticut  Churchman),  in 
which  it  first  appeared. 


POSTSCRIPT. 

Since  this  address  was  put  in  type  I  have  found 
reason  for  believing  that  the  admission  to  the  Lord's 
Supper  of  those  who  owned  the  covenant  was  not 
uncommon  in  Connecticut.  Some  portions  of  the 
address  should  therefore  be  considerably  modified, 
though  it  is  of  course  impossible,  now,  to  make  the 
changes. 


A    000105891     6 


